Starwatch
by CruxMDQ
Summary: A youthful lieutenant Shepard unknowingly facilitates the release of an ancient evil and sets in motion a chain of events that will greatly influence the outcome of the first contact with Citadel species - and potentially threaten the standing of humanity among them. (Contributions: BrokenLifeCycle, kishinokurobi, kyro2009; updates every 3-6 weeks. Please leave your comments! :)
1. Unsealed

Moon - Cabeus crater

A plasma cutting tool was set upon the blast door, and a shower of sparks erupted. A burning light strong enough to scorch the eyes started to labor its way through the ancient but sturdy bolts. Around the engineer, ten heavily armed and armored troopers waited, weapons at the ready, breaths terse, hearts beating with the adrenaline of field operations.

The engineer working on the door looked behind his shoulder briefly: "Ten to fifteen minutes, ma'am." The deceptively small woman nodded and studied the ancient blast door. It had no markings, no logos, no control panels of any kind on the sides.

The briefing she had received on this assignment was sparse enough to guess what her superiors knew on the topic: nothing. This ancient facility on the Cabeus crater was enough of a mystery to the Alliance military that they had seen fit to commission an ICT graduate to enter it. Lieutenant Aaliyah Shepard was not one given to questioning orders, but like any career officer, she had a working brain, and working brains tended to pick relentlessly at enigmas.

* * *

Deep within the vaults of the complex, instruments long since dormant detected the imminent breach. The security systems that protected the facility had been state-of-the-art decades ago, but their prolonged dormancy had not affected their efficiency in the least.

* * *

"Alpha team, be advised, power surges detected within the compound," Shepard's XO warning echoed in her earbuds.

"Copy that, London," she acknowledged. "Everybody, check your shields and weapons. Something just went online in there."

A chorus of yeses answered her. "Static defenses, ma'am?"

"I don't know. But better safe than sorry. There's got to be a good reason for someone wanting us of all people to reopen this place."

Shepard's eyes were on the door. The design she recognized; it was a sturdy zero-g atmospheric hatch. Except for a few slight differences -no external control panel, for one-, it was basically the same thing she had first seen at the Horizon Lunar Colony. _So what is this place?_ A forgotten depot or dependency or shelter? Reopening it did not call for the deployment of an Alliance Navy platoon.

After a painstaking effort, a hydraulic jack was worked under the huge blast door and turned on; the troopers, positioned on both sides of the gate, waited and watched for any signs of danger. There was a sharp hiss of escaping air, and they caught flashes of red light coming from the other side.

Then the hydraulic jack stopped. Periodic flashes of red and yellow lit the cavernous tunnel. Nothing moved.

Shepard raised a fist and signaled with her fingers. The engineer nodded his acknowledgement and produced a small spherical device from his hip satchel, which once released floated freely, spinned in place a few times, then started moving and hovered past the gate.

* * *

In the dark, a thought stirred.

 _Life…_

Memories sprang to mind, unbidden. Struggling and fighting. Faces. A blond man. Quickly the torpor receded to give way to cold rage.

 _Jack…_

* * *

The recon drone fed the output of its sensors both to the engineer and to Shepard. She was studying the place -it seemed to be a loading bay of some kind, but very rudimentary- when some lights blinked in the darkness; on a mental command she changed the visible spectrum to see-

-a mech shifting configuration into a huge stationary rotary cannon that quickly locked in on the recon drone. A flash of gunfire and the drone was blown to pieces.

"Great," Shepard cursed under her breath. "What do we have in there?"

The engineer was querying his database. "It's a… a Bastion mech, ma'am," the engineer replied. "It's a relic from the First Omnic Crisis."

 _Which means this place was built… forty years ago?_ "For a relic, it's surprisingly functional." She frowned inside her helmet. The Omnics had gone the way of many ethnic groups previously subjugated into subservience - after some harrowing soul-searching and no small bloodshed, they had gone on to integrate themselves as members of society like everyone else. The fact that they were synthetics -an euphemism in place of the crude 'robots'- was a contentious point that still rankled many, and Bastions were a reminder of the worst of those times.

"London, this is Shepard," she reported. Or tried to. Her channel was flooded with static. "London?"

"Active countermeasures, ma'am," the engineer reported.

The platoon leader was puzzled. Why jam the communications…? _Oh, I see._ Probably a signal for aid was being sent now. Who would come? Would anyone come at all?

She signaled her second-in-command to keep an eye on the tunnel exit in case someone surprised them from behind, then gave another order. A bulky trooper wielding a submachine gun and a heavy brace-like device strapped to his left arm stepped out of formation; a few commands to his omni-tool, then he placed his left forearm across and in front of him - and a barrier large enough to cover the approach of the whole platoon unfolded from the forearm brace. This shieldbearer signaled his readiness, and Shepard and the engineer took positions to his sides.

After a brief snapcount, they stepped out of cover. The rotary cannon opened up on the spot, but the barrier held - and as it fired, it gave the troopers a perfect target. The engineer used a laser designator to target a key mechanism on the gun, and Shepard pulled the trigger to fire a single round from her battle rifle. The cannon sputtered and stopped, jammed. The designator switched positions immediately; another round, and the Bastion was now effectively immobilized.

Shepard needed not giving further orders for her troopers to search for other countermeasures. It did not take long for them to find them: "Laser tripwires," the engineer cautioned, and sprayed some smoke to expose the two parallel bluish lines.

"Demo charges?" the shieldbearer speculated.

"Likely," was the wary reply.

The Alliance team searched the loading bay meticulously before concluding that there were no other nasty surprises that would make short work of their engineer before retreating back to the entrance and waiting for him to disarm the charges. As always, it made for a terse and uncomfortable wait.

"Fisher, report," Shepard ordered her second, in charge of the other fire team she had tasked into securing her escape route.

"All clear here, ma'am. No hostiles inbound. Still no contact with London."

"Keep trying. We are entering the facility. Report the findings to the commander the moment you regain contact."

"Yes, ma'am."

Thankfully, the wait was brief. "Ma'am? This is Krauze," the engineer said unnecessarily. "It's clear."

"What is it?" She could sense the restlessness in her engineer's voice.

"Whoever left this place behind did not settle for small things." It turned out that no simple explosive traps had been set to deter intruders, but a whole fusion charge instead, with a yield to rival the muzzle energy of a cruiser battery. "This is unreasonable, ma'am. This would have vaporized us, the vault, and everything in a thirteen-mile radius."

 _Whatever is inside is dangerous,_ she concluded automatically. For a second she considered retreating and calling a decontamination team to take over, but in either case she would be asked to clear out the site first. "Can you see what's inside that thing?"

"The Bastion, ma'am? Sure, I can try, it should take half an hour, supposing it's not housing an AI."

"If it is, then at least we'll get some answers."

* * *

It had been lonely in the darkness and the cold for so long that the warmth of life was like a bright flame, and its call ignored glass, plastic, metal, stone and concrete alike.

Other things had been warm. People. Men and women. Erstwhile friends and comrades.

Glory hogs. Selfish bastards.

The rushing torrent of memories became a river of black acid as pain turned into rage and rage turned into pain. Jack. The woman, Ziegler.

 _What did she do to me?_

* * *

"It's not an AI," Krauze reported. "The original Omnic software has been wiped and replaced with a sentry VI."

"Any clues on who did it?"

"Negative, ma'am."

"Then turn it off."

"Understood, ma'am."

The second gate on the other end of the loading bay was even heavier and sturdier than the first one, and took longer to open. Only this time, there were no defenses waiting for them, but inner lights were turned on.

The place would have been some sort of medical facility, except for the tall cylinder of polished chrome in the middle of the circular vault, kept raised from the floor by means of two mechanical arms holding it by the base and by the top. Many computer screens littered the walls.

The moment they set foot in the place, the screens turned on to depict a blond woman.

"If you're watching this, it means that you have breached the safeguards we put into place to keep this hazard contained. Please, turn back, seal this place again, and never return. You are not aware of the danger you are in."

Everyone was alert at once, but the shieldbearer was also stunned with amazement: "That's… Mercy, ma'am. Doctor Angela Ziegler. She-"

"Shush!" His commander furiously overrode him as Mercy continued to speak. Her face was strained with pain and fear:

"We… I… She tried to save him, but instead she created something that cannot be put down. He cannot be killed, only contained. Please! Go, for your own sakes!"

Shepard turned to Krauze: "Is this a recording?"

Unexpectedly Mercy shook her head on the screen. Tears of desperation rolled down her face: "I'm an AI. She left me behind, modeled me after herself to warn you. You don't know what's in here and you're better off that way. Once he gets free there's almost no containing him again!"

"Why shoot us?"

"You think I liked the idea?" Mercy screamed. Then her voice became subdued, as if the original Angela Ziegler had had to rehearse those words time and time again: "A few deaths is a price she would have paid gladly to prevent all the suffering and horror he… this… would unleash." Again a tearful look. "I know you are soldiers, you're trained to disregard anything but your orders. Please, use your heads. Report this to your superiors and counsel them to restore the safeguards. This must not break out."

* * *

 _Oh, doc… aren't you right about that one._

* * *

The soldiers looked hesitantly at Shepard. She was their leader, but Angela Ziegler had been a legend, a member of Overwatch, an agency that had upheld ideals of peace and integration in the most militant of ways - and in the most honest and upright of ways, both while it had been supported by world powers and as a rogue body that had again protected the weak while those same world powers had sat on their thumbs. Their doings had been the moral foundation of the Alliance as it had taken to the stars.

Shepard would not be moved by the reputation of the late Ziegler alone, but a quick examination of everything her team had found, plus the particulars of the place -location, countermeasures, and facility contents- inclined her to follow Mercy's advice. "London actual, this is Shepard," she spoke, confident that the AI would have disabled the jamming by now, and looking at the seals and warnings in the containment tank. "Facility inspection is complete. Presence of level 6 biological hazards detected. This place is not secure. Immediate resealing recommended."

"Shepard, this is London actual, we copy your signal five by five. We acknowledge your detection of level 6 biological hazards. Abandon facility at once and await for arrival of decontamination team."

"Sir, I strongly recommend the complete abandonment of the place." She was not looking at the Mercy avatar in the screens, but she could see the eyes of some of her men who were. And could literally feel the AI pleading: _please._

"Your recommendation is noted. Decontamination and cleanup will proceed as planned. Abandon the facility and retreat to the entrance."

She had to battle the urge to sigh. "Yes sir." Only now did she turn towards the screens. It was not a real face, only a simulation, but her reason had little to do when her heart cracked at the sight. Again she had to repress an urge - this time to say how sorry she was.

"They will let him out!" Mercy screamed in despair.

* * *

 _And I have waited long enough for that, doc. And I'm hungry…_

* * *

Shepard had to force herself to ignore the pleading and begging and warnings of the borderline insane AI, but she had to note the effect it had had on her men. Fisher, her second-in-command, noticed this when her team joined his:

"What happened in there, ma'am? We heard gunfire and stuff but you look like you'd all seen a ghost."

She thought about it for a second, then decided that Fisher had been cleared for that mission as well. "That place's a… an Overwatch vault. I think. Angela Ziegler -Mercy- sealed something in there and left behind an AI to warn us not to open it. She-it was literally crying out to us to reseal everything and leave."

Fisher stared at her long and hard. She did not flinch. At last he sighed and slumped his shoulders. "Alright, ma'am, begging your pardon, it's insane but I believe you. What are we going to do about it, ma'am?"

"Sit back and wait. There's a decontamination team enroute. We wait and hand over the site to them." Her voice spoke volumes about what she thought of the whole deal.

"You don't like it."

She snorted. "I should know better than heeding the rants of a mad AI that has been locked alone in the dark for God knows how many years guarding God knows whatever kind of horrible thing is in there, but no, I don't like it."

Fisher nodded seriously. "Ma'am, go with your gut then."

The implied vote of confidence was what decided her. "Krauze," she barked.

"Ma'am?" The engineer came over at once.

"Power up and repair the jams on that Bastion unit. Then interface it with that AI."

A brief silence followed. "According to regs, I have to log your command, ma'am."

"Do it. Then do what I told you."

Krauze nodded. He had trusted Shepard ever since she had become his commanding officer but what she was ordering was borderline suicide. "Yes, ma'am."

She turned towards the rest of her squad. Ricks was the burly shieldbearer that had protected her advance. Akemi was her designated markswoman and Thaler their medic. They all nodded at her without word.

"Fisher," she turned again towards her second, "I want you and Team-2 stationed near the entrance to 'welcome' the decontamination team. The rest of you, you know your drills. We don't know what to expect, but we will act on the assumption that something hostile will come out from within the facility."

"Yes ma'am."

They scattered to take their positions and check their gear for the umpteenth time, leaving their commander alone with her doubts. She was a lowly lieutenant -a promising and exceptionally gifted and skilled but lowly lieutenant- who had been given clear enough orders. What she was doing could be construed as disobedience. Why was she doing it? What kind of discipline was that? Letting her judgment and orders to be overridden by a synthesized voice composed by a program that had every chance of being a fabrication? A fake?

Why a place in near-zero gravity gave her such a bad sensation then? Trust your guts, Fisher had said.

Krauze's voice broke the spell: "Ma'am, it's done."

"Already?"

"Well, ma'am, the AI locked everything down tight and housed itself on a portable memory core. All I had to do was to install it on the Bastion chassis."

"'Locked everything down tight'?"

"As much as the circumstances allowed."

Shepard felt cold despite the many-layered thermal insulation of her powered armor. She did not like a self-aware AI housed on a Bastion, but-

"What about the fusion charges?"

"The detonation mechanism is physically decoupled and disabled, ma'am. There's no simply re-arming the charges."

"Good." She did not know whether to feel glad or sad. Eventually the sensation that she was facilitating something very wrong prevailed.

It was about to get worse. "Ma'am, the decontamination team is here." It was Fisher.

"Send them in."

The team consisted of a dozen men and women clad in heavy zero-g hazmat suits, bulky enough as to make them distantly resemble the astronauts of the 20th century. The lead man's tag read Clemenceau. "Lieutenant Shepard?"

She saluted. "Reporting as ordered, sir."

She could not see his face, but she was certain he was evaluating the disposition of her men and the huge bulk of the reactivated Bastion unit with its rotary cannon pointed towards the facility. "If I remember right you were ordered to stand down."

"Better safe than sorry, sir."

His disapproval was evident but a soldier could not be reprimanded for showing caution in the face of an unknown threat. "We'll take it from here. Your team is relieved from your duties and your orders are to return to the London for debriefing."

She nodded reluctantly. "Begging your pardon, sir, my chief engineer has requested permission to remove this Bastion mech and I have granted it. We are going to need a larger shuttle to accommodate it. In the meantime we would have no problem in acting as a supplementary guard force."

Clemenceau saw no fault in that. If the marines wanted to take apart that Omnic Crisis relic, it was their business. "As long as it does not interfere with our cleanup operations, I have no objections, lieutenant. Just please have it point its guns elsewhere."

The mech did so without any orders on Shepard's command. She found herself wishing she could share her growing unease with someone else, and hoped the AI had been wrong.

Then she got a message from Ricks via the squad private network: _Will they find the AI?_

 _It's housed on the mech,_ was her reply.

 _Why not tell them?_

Shepard decided she had to give that one last try. She started walking towards the second massive gate, under the menacing eyes of the quartet of armed guards now on station there, and she heard the voice of the AI speaking again, word by word, on the same tone-

- _was it a recording?_

Clemenceau turned towards Shepard. "Why wasn't this reported?"

She shrugged. "I have no direct evidence that this was recorded by Angela Ziegler herself, sir. In any case, the warnings on the tank are genuine, and I based myself on those to send my alert."

The man glanced again at the looping message -not a hint of the face being an AI's avatar was present there- and then again at Shepard. "It could be a fabrication, alright."

Another man manipulated a console, and the robotic arms holding the containment tank suspended in midair twitched. There was a screech of metal on metal -more felt than heard- and she felt heartsick for an instant, but the tank did not break. She turned to leave as coolly as she could: "Fabrication or not, I'd take those warnings to heart, sir."

She walked out at a brisk pace. The Bastion's chaingun swiveled on its place and pointed its barrels at the door she had just passed through. Her instincts screamed at her to run to cover, to get out of that loading bay as fast as she could, and she found it increasingly hard to resist those urges, even if that massive Gatling cannon was not pointed at her-

Abruptly red lights started turning everywhere. Messages blared on all frequencies: _ALERT. ALERT. CONTAINMENT BREACH. SECURITY SEALS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED. ABANDON INSTALLATION IMMEDIATELY._

"Shepard! What's going on-?" Clemenceau demanded on the spot and turned on his heel to see one of the mechanical arms giving way after an improper maneuver - and cutting a huge tear on the containment tank as it did.

Thick, black, oily smoke dropped out, forming a pool.

The members of the containment team were scrambling to leave already: " _LEAVE EVERYTHING! MOVE! MOVE!"_

The pool now was almost two meters wide. Then it started to shrink in size as it grew in height.

To become a cloaked, masked man.

The half-dozen hazmat-equipped security guards gaped at the erstwhile prisoner in horrified disbelief as he simply crackled its neck joints -joints that had not existed a second ago, that could not exist in a near-vacuum- and glared at them through invisible eyes.

"He's free." Shepard heard the resigned and sad voice in her earbuds. Mercy's.

The man then became a black pool of smoke again, and then shifted into an inky, sentient cloud of living darkness that engulfed the guards, and the frequencies filled with screaming.

Then the Bastion opened up. Shepard, right next to the mech, felt the ground tremble as the powerful Gatling cannon spat a solid stream of shells on the cloud.

Ricks broke cover and took position next to his commander and to the mech, instantly deploying his shield. Thaler followed suit, sidearm at the ready. "What the hell was that thing?" the burly assault specialist whispered under his breath.

"Exactly what we were warned about," Shepard replied quietly. _And we are alone with him._ "London actual, this is Shepard, we are under attack, the decontamination team is down. Requesting reinforcements."

"Shepard, acknowledged, stand by. Dispatching team Bravo now. ETA 8 minutes."

The lieutenant had no time to frame a reply because there was a torrent of gunfire behind her and she heard a feminine scream -Thaler's- right next to her. Then there was cold, a cold like nothing she had experienced in her entire life, and something she could not see smashed her squarely on her neck. She fell limp against the frame of the mech as she heard screams on her earbuds, and then a weight fell over her. She did not have to tell it was Ricks.

Half stunned, she crawled from under her soldier's body and tried to grope back into her feet, but an armored boot stomped on her back. Icy fingers gripped her shoulder like a vise and turned her face up.

It was a nightmare come true, the visage of the Grim Reaper, if such a thing were real. But _this_ thing was. Dressing in a long leather coat, brandishing two submachine guns looted from the guards of the hazmat team, it -for, even if it had the shape of a human, it was no longer one-, it regarded her with cold amusement.

Then _he_ spoke, and she felt that cold again gripping her. And a boundless, overwhelming terror, that no amount of training could hope to contain.

 _You have set me free. My thanks._

* * *

Codex: the Moon

Humanity first set foot on this desolate planetoid on July 20th, 1969. After a series of successive trips, it received no further visits until 2029, when a first attempt was made at establishing a permanent presence on the large basaltic plain known as Mare Crisium. Since then, several craters have been encased in domes to allow for limited, localized terraformation.

A scientific installation was set up on the Langrenus crater by Lucheng Interstellar in 2050 with the dual purpose of studying the effects of long-term low gravity exposure and experimenting with genetic uplifting. With the first part of the initiative rendered moot early on by the reverse engineering of mass effect technology, the laboratory focused on its genetic research, and produced specimens with near-human or human-level intelligence from gorilla stock.

The program would come to a violent end on 2075, as the test subjects rebelled and took control of the installation and the nearby Horizon Lunar Colony by force; the single gorilla who refused to take part in the uprising fled to Earth and later became known as Winston, one of the leaders of Overwatch. The Lucheng facility and the Horizon colony would remain in rebel hands until 2082, when they were retaken by the Alliance navy.

Nowadays, large swathes of the Moon are being mined for helium-3 and raw materials to fuel the construction of large orbital stations around Earth, but sectors still remain restricted to the public. Rumours abound of secret facilities and delicate research taking place.


	2. Recovery

SSV London - Moon orbit

The voice was distant, like echoes traveling down a long tunnel. It took her some time to piece together some of the words: "...think she's waking up."

All was darkness, then something was brought up and the darkness changed to a dull red. It took Shepard a few seconds to actually realize she was conscious again, and the change from black to red was caused by a small flashlight being shined on her face. She commanded her eyelids to open. They felt monstrously heavy and took ages to obey her orders.

The light felt painful and she weakly tried to raise a hand to shield her eyes. An attempt to tell the doctor to turn that thing off only produced a groan of undefined meaning. "Easy," someone said. It was a familiar voice. "Relax. It's okay. You're safe."

"Safe…?" Then her brains worked and the memories of everything that had happened rushed back violently: "My team-!" A jolt of adrenaline coursed through her and she tried to sit up straight, but she was strapped to the bed.

Doctor Rodrigo Cameron shook his head sadly. "Lieutenant… I know this is hard, but we need to ask you what happened there." He raised his head and told a nurse: "Tell the commander Shepard is awake." The woman nodded and tapped a terminal.

"What happened…? You mean there are no recorded logs…?"

Cameron shook his head again. "The technical bits are beyond my expertise, but Seltzer could not explain it. The gear your troop was using was completely fried. You were found alive because that Bastion unit you found put you on a rebreather."

"Which means…" Shepard went even paler than she already was. Tears spilled as her face hardened into an expressionless mask.

"I'm sorry, lieutenant."

She closed her eyes, and but only briefly. As soon as she did, she could see the hooded, masked specter that had slaughtered Ricks, Thaler, Akemi, Krauze, and- "Fisher… Team-2… "

"Lieutenant… this is difficult, but we need to ask you what you saw."

"First tell me how they died."

Cameron was now not only sad, but also uneasy. "They were shot, lieutenant. Some were riddled with holes, but… on top of that… I have never come across anything like it, Shepard. Once we removed the armor, they appeared to be partially mummified, almost desiccated. Both your crew and the containment team were in that condition. Whatever got to them, it went right through military-grade armor."

After Cameron pronounced _desiccated,_ Shepard was not really listening anymore. Instead, the words of the _thing_ boomed in her head: _You have set me free. My thanks._

 _Sweet, merciful God, what have I done?_

"You didn't find him?"

"Who?"

Shepard did not move. She answered slowly. "All of this was caused by a single man. The facility was an oubliette. The Overwatch built it to contain something they could not destroy. We found a message warning us about it and I recommended to act on it, but I was overruled."

Cameron stared at her for a split-second in disbelief but did not have time to reply because an officer walked into the infirmary. "Commander," he saluted.

"At ease, doctor. Shepard? How are you holding up?" Commander Paul Lefevre asked.

The woman turned to face him -feeling a sharp pain on her right shoulder as she did so, where the man-thing had gripped her- and glared at him coldly. "I lost nine excellent troopers, sir. I spent three years shaping them and training them and they are gone because someone decided from the comfort of a bridge that their call was better than that of someone who was in place and aware of the situation. Now, sir, begging your pardon, may you please restate your question?"

Lefevre's steel eyes blazed at the thinly veiled reproach but he did not pull rank on her as he could have. Losing good men was a bad hit for any officer and he had suffered through that. "I'll take that as an 'okay'. Still, those wounds are going to keep you away for a while."

Only then did she realize that she was bandaged from the waist up. She had a dull pain on her back and shoulders, and occasionally felt sharp jolts when breathing. Her whole body felt stiff. She forced herself to relax - it was neither fair nor wise to use her superior as a target of opportunity to vent her anger. She would later take it out on Jamison, the XO, if the call had indeed been his alone. "It hurts a bit, sir, yes."

"I know you're better than that, Shepard, but no heroics, you understand? We want you back one hundred percent."

"You just said so, sir. I know better than pushing myself too hard."

"Good." He turned towards Cameron. "Did I miss anything relevant?"

"It's… best if you ask her yourself, sir."

Lefevre did. Shepard repeated what she had just described about the origins and purpose of the facility. Far from acting incredulously, the officer rested his chin on his hand and thought for a few seconds. "What else did you find? Who was this 'man' you speak of?"

"Beats me, sir. But he-whatever he is, he isn't human anymore." Her voice quivered in spite of herself. She was not an easy woman to frighten, which spoke volumes about what she had seen to her commander. "He-it was dressed in a long hooded leather overcoat, heavy boots and gauntlets, and wore a white mask. Like-like the skull of some bird or something. No zero-g suit, no oxygen supply, no nothing. When the con-containment tank was ruptured it simply leaked out, like it was black oil. Then it… it _adopted_ that human form, and changed into a cloud of smoke. I last saw the decontamination team alive before it engulfed them. How it got behind us…" She shook her head. "Why did it spare me? Why didn't it just shoot me too?"

Nobody could answer. At last Lefevre laid a hand gently on her left -unbandaged- shoulder. "Just thank you are alive." Then: "She will have to be out of action for how long, doctor? A week?"

"To be safe, at least that much, sir. I don't see any cracked ribs, but the shoulder has me worried the most." Cameron brought up his tablet computer. "Have a look at this." The doctor had taken pictures of Shepard's right shoulder. The flesh was discolored, almost grayish in color. "I took a few tissue samples. This is extremely unique, sir, I never saw anything like it."

Shepard stared at the screen blankly. "Show me what happened to my crew." Lefevre was going to say something, but she shot him an incendiary glare. The doctor noticed the exchange and obliged to the request - and immediately the woman wished she had heeded the unspoken advice. Whoever he or she had been, the corpse was literally consumed, ash-gray in color, the skin stretched thin over the bones. It looked like the body of a millennia-old mummy.

She turned her face away from that ghastly image and looked at her bandaged shoulder, tried to move it, tapped it. It was responsive, but besides the dull pain, it felt completely desensitized. "Careful with that," Cameron warned.

"I don't feel anything-well, yes, a slight pain, but-" She struggled with words. "I touch it and I feel nothing else."

The doctor looked at her, then at Lefevre. "Best if I run a few more tests on that."

The commander shook his head. "Get her suited up. I'm sending her planetside. Shepard, come talk to me when you're ready."

"Yes sir."

But, after Cameron and a nurse had helped her inside her uniform, she did not immediately go to her commander. Instead, she took the elevator to the lower decks and to the hangar and armory. The day-to-day routine of the place had been disrupted by the massive relic that now rested against a wall of the hangar. A score of curious marines and technicians surrounded it, but it gave no signs of activity at all.

Except that when Shepard walked into the cavernous space, the cubelike head popped out, moved this and that way, chirped out a few times, and the mech shifted into its walker configuration. Startled, the people moved out of its way, but the mech was immobilized against the wall and could not move.

"Ell-tee!" A holler welcomed her. The hangar was the province of their chief supply officer and armorer, Marcus Seltzer, a man as small and wiry as she was, but much less athletic, and much more of a tech wizard.

"Marcus," she greeted in reply, raising a hand - and immediately grimacing in pain as she did. "Is that thing armed?"

"No, its guns are disabled, I saw to that."

Some of the marines approached her, with a wary eye on the mech. "Good to see you're okay, ma'am," one blonde Astrid Martinsson saluted her.

"Thank you." Shepard returned the salute.

"What happened out there, ma'am?" Another marine asked. The question put her off briefly.

"I don't know if I'm cleared to tell you, Ortiz. What I can disclose is that if some REMF had listened to me my crew would still be alive."

"Hang a big roger on that one, ma'am," Martinsson agreed with an edge. The sentiment was not exactly unknown among the crew. She turned towards the Bastion that was now looking her way. "I hear that this Omnic saved your life. Is it true?"

"Cameron said as much," she agreed warily.

"I couldn't get it to start up," Seltzer cut in. Then he turned towards the onlookers and clapped once: "Alright, showtime's over. Everyone get back to work. I don't need you shaming me before the LT."

The technicians walked away. Martinsson and Ortiz remained with Shepard. She sensed their restlessness. "What is it?"

Ortiz squared himself. "Nothing, ma'am, it's just… If you had picked me instead of Akemi, I'd be dead now."

"Yes, you would be." The lieutenant was blunt. "But that's it. Their numbers came up. Yours didn't. It happens." Besides, Diego Ortiz was a green trooper, not exactly freshly out of boot camp but not the most experienced soldier around by a long shot.

"Yes, ma'am, I know. You do what you have to do."

Shepard's jaw tightened at that. "You got that one right, Ortiz. Clench your fists, beat the crap out of a punching bag or spar a few rounds over a ring if it helps, get it out of your system any way you can. Then you keep going."

"The CO did that after his own fashion," Martinsson quipped as they watched Seltzer go over the mech. "You should have seen him on Tuesday. He literally snapped his vocal cords."

 _Tuesday?_ She glanced at her omni-tool and realized it was Friday. _I was out cold four days?_ Her right shoulder tingled. Unconsciously she tried to ease it off - a mistake, she realized too late. "Damn! This fucking hurts… He tore off someone's head?"

"The XO got a chewing. A bad one."

"Serves him right," was the automatic reply.

"LT?" Seltzer asked. "Would you come over here, please?"

Shepard approached warily. "What's it?"

"'What's it'? Well, to begin with, this is no ordinary Bastion. Look at this." Seltzer had opened the maintenance ports for the machine gun mechanisms, and found that there was no machine gun there. "You remember the Bastion specs, ma'am, right? .50-caliber machine gun, 7.62mm Gatling gun, standard 20th-century specs. Well, look at this." The blue glow of an eezo container was clearly visible amidst the jumble of parts. "Someone jury-rigged a modern gun for this thing. And this mech is _old._ Look at the stamps. It has sixty years at least."

Mysteries kept piling up. "We've known eezo for, what? Ten years?"

"Not to mention it's expensive shite."

"The most expensive raw material money can buy," another voice cut in. Shepard turned around:

"Sir!" Lefevre was walking into the hangar, flanked by two marines.

"At ease. I knew I would find you here. No worries, Shepard. After all this hunk of junk saved your life."

The Bastion beeped disapprovingly. The lieutenant smiled, wondering who knew that an AI modeled after Mercy resided inside that chassis. "I take it that it doesn't like being called that way, sir."

Lefevre grunted. "Well, if it's an AI, it's earned my gratitude for protecting whatever it could of my men. I'm having it shipped planetside with you."

"Where to, sir?"

"You're going to Numbani. I made arrangements for some people to interview you there."

She was dumbstruck. "Then… it's true, then. This was an Overwatch vault after all."

Seltzer, Martinsson and Ortiz were equally stupefied. "What?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions." Lefevre waved everyone but Shepard out of earshot. "I have Wenner's and Minovsky's teams scouring the crater, looking for signs of the thing that attacked you. They haven't reported anything yet, but I have the feeling they won't find it. I'm afraid we are out of our depth here, so I'm sending you to talk to the only experts on the matter. Go to the Overwatch Memorial on Numbani. People will be waiting for you."

She took a deep breath, ignoring the sharp pain on her back and also ignoring the pain on her right shoulder as she saluted. "Yes sir."

Numbani, Nigerian savannah - Adawe International Airport

Aaliyah had never been in Numbani. Earth was actually a place she had visited for the first time when she had attended the Interplanetary Combatives Training school in Rio de Janeiro, and those had been the two most exhausting years of her life. But she had completed the course, attaining the coveted N1 designation - and had gotten to see the cradle of humanity in the process. South America was a vibrant and vital place, if also a convulsed one. Riots against this or that megacorporation were everyday news.

The names she was seeing now on ads screens around the airport were familiar and a throwback to those days: Vishkar, Helix, Rosenkov. Numbani was, however, much, much cleaner and crispier than Rio. And a sight for sore eyes. Synths and peoples of all shapes and colors crowded the airport.

She had had little time to catch up on her reading about both Omnic Crisis during her shuttle flight, but she had made the best out of it. The exploits of Overwatch were popular culture, but exact facts were much harder to pin down. The agency had collapsed after being repeatedly lambasted for excessive collateral damage - and after an unexplained attack on its Swiss headquarters. The advent of the second Omnic Crisis had seen the world powers impotent to stop the onslaught of the god AIs, and popular support had rallied around the rogue remnants of the agency that took the matter into their own hands until the act restricting their activities was repealed and their charter restored.

And that was pretty much it. Operational records were sealed and classified. Personnel files were sketchy, with only a few names and aliases having filtered out - except for those of the leading members that had catapulted the agency to worldwide fame. Jack Morrison, Gabriel Reyes, Lena Oxton, Angela Ziegler, Hana Song, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Tekhartha Zenyatta. She could recite those names in her sleep. In fact, she herself had joined the Alliance Navy after the discovery of the Charon trans-stellar accelerator, following the example set by Morrison himself: with humanity expanding beyond Earth and into stars far beyond Sol, there would be other worlds that would need soldiers to protect the weak like the Overwatch leader had.

But what had become of them? It was known that Ziegler had perished in battle against the Russian god AI, which had prompted an universal day of mourning and had had the effect of finally bringing the agency out of clandestinity. Wilhelm was reputedly ancient but still alive, leading a modern version of a knightly order - in fact, his discipline and loadout had been translated almost verbatim into the Navy shieldbearer specialty, a role Ricks had fulfilled flawlessly until…

The memory of his dark grinning face brought her out of her ruminations. She hardened her jaw. She had unwittingly released that _thing,_ but she was going to put it back in a cage. No matter what. Ricks' memory demanded it.

She was led to the cargo area of the airport, where the Bastion sat silent inside a crate. An Omnic attendant had her digitally sign the delivery form, and the crate was loaded on a hovertruck. Then a hovercar arrived, and a slim woman in bright orange pants stepped out.

"Oi, girl! Welcome to Earth!" She greeted her gaily. Shepard was dumbstruck.

"…Tracer?"

The woman giggled, and in the blink of an eye she was right next to her. "I prefer 'Lena' but that will do, yes. How are you? You had a nice trip? Are you hurting much? I understand you're bringing home a friend?"

In spite of her wounds and her grief, Shepard laughed. It was true, then. Oxton was a walking -nay, a running- burst of vitality and energy. "I didn't know I was bringing home a friend, but it makes sense now." She again became serious and started walking towards the hovercar. "About what happened… Some shadow-specter thing. There was-"

"Reaper." The color was drained from Tracer's face.

"So you know him."

"We didn't know what had become of him. Fought him lots of times, luv. The chap's impossible to put down. Angie and Winston spent years trying to lock him up. They never told anyone they had done it."

"Well, they did. And then I fucked up."

"Hey." Tracer held Shepard's hand. "I read what happened. You were overruled by some twat of an officer. Your CO sent us the report. It happens."

"Yeah. I know. I only wish word had reached you sooner."

"Well, the cat's out of the bag now, ain't it? No point on dwelling on that. They locked 'im up once, surely we can do it again. Come, let's be off."

* * *

Codex: Numbani

A controversial place from its earliest days in the eyes of many, the successive upheavals and crises experienced by the City of Harmony have tested its commitment to equality time and time again. Terrorist attacks, human supremacist insurgency and outright low-intensity warfare raging through its streets have not compromised the core values of Numbani, and each time its citizens have stood as one and weathered the storm.

This city has its origins on the closing days of the First Omnic Crisis. Large swathes of the African savannah were ravaged into blasted wastelands during the conflict, and rights to them were eventually awarded by the African Union to a small egalitarian faction of humans and omnics, after the countries with legal jurisdiction over them showed their disinterest by trying to pin the work of restoring those lands on each other. The conditions were so stringent that it was widely believed this group of dreamers was in for a very rude awakening and an equally ignominious demise, but even the most recalcitrant of objectors reluctantly had to start supporting the reclamation initiative as it brought peace to the area in record time. Official endorsement by UN undersecretary Gabrielle Adawe ushered in enormous amounts of philanthropic initiatives first and investment next.

Its explosive growth attracted the attention of supremacists on both sides. From its earliest days Numbani had to contend with the threat posed by both Talon and Null Sector. Most notably, two incarnations of the infamous Doomfist staged assaults against the city, with Akande Ogundimu going as far as organizing a large insurgency that turned part of Numbani into a warzone. This effort was first foiled by Overwatch on a deployment that was widely criticized for the extensive collateral damage it caused, and ultimately vanquished years later by the same organization after its charter was restored by the UN.

Nowadays, one of the key features of the city is Ziegler Plaza, a large park dominated by an imposing statue built in the likeness of the late Angela Ziegler that overshadows the large dome of the Overwatch memorial and former headquarters. As an independent city-state, Numbani has no standing armed force to speak of, but instead houses an important contingent of Alliance forces. With the conflicts between humans and omnics becoming a sad memory of days in the distant past, the City of Harmony is a vibrant cultural and scientific hub, and a shining example of cooperation between organics and synthetics.


	3. Reunion

Numbani - Overwatch Memorial

A huge fountain was set a hundred paces from the gates to the dome-shaped building, the imposing statue of an angel the centerpiece. Shepard knew of this. Switzerland had donated the monument to honor the memory of the late Angela Ziegler; the features on the statue mirrored hers.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" If she was getting to know something about Tracer, it was that the girl was literally incapable of staying silent for long.

She stared in the stone face twenty meters high, and the pleading, tear-stained visage in the screen flashed in her mind again. The sculptor had done a great job, but had failed to capture that sense of humanity so visible on the AI avatar that had tried unsuccessfully to warn her off. "I'm sorry, Lena. Not words enough."

The cheerful woman misread the wistful tone in Shepard's words. "She has that effect in everyone who visits for the first time."

The lieutenant's sharp eye was noticing other details. The memorial was set in the center of a park some six hundred meters wide. There was no direct line of sight from the fountain to any entrance to the structure, but it was well within sight of four tall obelisks set on each edge of the park. The landscaping was exquisite, but there were no tall trees, only waist-high bushes at most. _A kill-zone in nearly every direction,_ she evaluated. "I don't remember hearing of anyone attacking this place."

Oxton snorted. "They would have to be out of their minds."

"Well, your crew has never ran out of people wanting to shoot at you." In the past, it was Omnics, then it had been Talon operatives, and then again Omnics. Nowadays, fringe groups of human supremacists hated Overwatch with a passion, but they were exactly that, fringe groups. Or were they? "Damn, I ought to be better informed than this."

A smirk. "A spacer playing policewoman for colonists in strange worlds?"

Aaliyah smiled sadly. "Yeah, it feels like that sometimes. I've lost count of how many pirates and raiders I've put down. Barely half a decade since we've settled new star systems and our space is already infested with scum." And before then, we had managed to make a cesspool of our own star.

"There will always be chaps like those, luv. That's what people like you and I are there for."

Shepard's smile got warmer and widened. On top of being plucky, this Overwatch legend was also indefatigable. How did she accomplish it? Four tours of duty without setting foot on Earth had already made an insufferable cynic out of her.

"What's the latest news on Pokhara?" Tracer asked next.

"I was stationed there for a few months last year. Some people live there now, but the place's still mostly an Omnic colony. All Shambali."

A nod. "We seldom hear anything about the colonies proper, 'cept for bad news."

"No surprise you wouldn't hear from Pokhara then. I understand a fellow of yours helped set up the place."

"That'd be Zeny, alright. He made the difference."

No guards waved them in when they entered the building garage. After parking, the crate was unloaded and moved into a cargo lift, and sent below. They followed suit shortly afterwards - and arrived to see some people opening the crate while others watched. An angry voice yelled, "Be careful with that, you lot of oafs! Are your heads in your arses? I told you this stuff is delicate twice already!"

Tracer giggled. "Grampy Torbjorn's having his usual sunny disposition."

Then a luxuriously bearded head popped from around the side of the crate, his furious eyes ablaze. "'Sunny disposition'? Why, you little-let's see who has the 'sunny disposition' when you need your chronal core tuned again!"

The girl pouted. "Is that a way to behave before guests?"

"Don't try playing that card with me, girl, I'm old, cranky, and I like my projects treated with care!"

 _'My projects'-_ "Excuse me, sir, but you know what's inside this crate, right?"

A man worked its way through the group of onlookers. Given the color of his hair and the many wrinkles of his skin he appeared to be in his seventies. A cruel scar ran over his right eye socket. "Welcome to the Overwatch Memorial, lieutenant Shepard."

It took her a split second to recognize who the man was. Immediately she drew herself to attention and saluted. "Yes sir, thank you sir. It's-it's an honor." It had taken all of her temper not to feel intimidated by that figure.

Tracer popped irreverently behind Shepard. "Oh well, I see introductions aren't necessary this time around."

The front part of the crate was removed. Torbjorn ordered, "Everyone, clear out! Stand back!"

There was a whirring of wheels, and a small tracked vehicle rolled out of the crate. The moment it was out, the mech shifted from its tank configuration to its walker form and waited.

The stocky Swede looked at the Bastion with a mixture of distaste and wonder, then, as it stood there standing by, went behind it to plug in the necessary hardware. Shepard looked on expectantly as well. Then she noticed, among the onlookers, a silver-blond girl that would be, perhaps, on her late twenties, her features a vivid match of those she had seen on the screens in that facility on the Cabeus crater. Her eyes were glittering with tears.

Commander Jack Morrison approached the mech, looking for signs of recognition. The square head followed his movements. He turned to Torbjorn: "Only a few seconds, Jack, this should be up and going… now!"

In front of the mech, Torbjorn had placed a small holographic projector. In this case, it was just enough to produce a life-size hologram of the late Angela Ziegler outfitted in her Mercy response suit.

Morrison turned to face the hologram: "Angela?"

The projected face saddened. "What's left of me."

Shepard felt her own eyes wet as she saw the girl twist her face and cover her trembling lips with a quivering hand. In the silence, she heard a few sobs.

Someone placed a hand on her right shoulder. She briefly grimaced and turned around - to see… the brown eyes of a masked man clad in a suit of silver armor with neon-green accents. His English was heavily laced with an Asian accent: "We of Overwatch thank you for bringing some of Angela back to us, lieutenant."

She numbly nodded and stumbled forward in the silence. The heads of the Bastion and the holographic Mercy turned to face her. "Hello…" she managed to stutter.

A warm smile spread on Mercy's face. "You're alive. I'm happy to see you."

Tears spilled. "You saved me. You put me on a rebreather."

Torbjorn grinned in relief. "It's what Angie would have done, alright."

The silver-blond girl closed in, but before she could say anything, Morrison turned around to face the crowd: "I think we should give Anika some privacy. Clear out, people."

Shepard followed Morrison and his crew as they made their way to the officers' ward room. She felt so small, walking in the company of such people. "Sir, begging your pardon, please-please excuse me for asking this… but I reckon Anika is Mercy's daughter?"

Morrison nodded. "We don't know for certain what's left of Angela in there, but that's the closest she's going to get to meeting her in the flesh. When she died Anika was scarcely a year old."

"How can you be so sure it's her?"

This time it was Torbjorn who answered. "When we received the distress signal from the Moon we didn't know what it was. Lena here went through Winston's diaries looking for clues until we hit upon their secret project."

"Secret project…?"

"The less people knew where Reaper was, the better, they thought," Morrison mused. "They were almost right."

She lowered her eyes. "I'm sorry, sir."

Morrison turned around on the spot and glared at her. "From what your report says, if you had been acting on your own, you could be court-martialed for disobeying direct orders from a superior officer and for indirectly causing the death of your squad, but your actions were instigated by a bad call on part of said officer and your attempt to salvage the situation after your advice was disregarded. And the advice, everyone here agrees, was sound and with good reason. Officers are expected to exercise judgement, and that's exactly what you did. Next time you say you're sorry, have a reason to be sorry, lieutenant."

Probably the court-martial itself would have been less harsh than the on-point feedback by the man whose example had set her on the path to join the military, but the rebuke filled her with pride. If that man had said she had done everything right, then she had done everything right, period. "I'll have those words engraved in metal somewhere so I can see them every day, sir."

Morrison's glare became charged with a spark of pride in turn. "Anytime, lieutenant." He breathed deeply. "Anyway, back to your question," he continued. "Winston and Zenyatta worked together to create a mind-machine interface. I won't bore you with the specifics, but they hit upon a technique to take 'snapshots' of someone's psychological profile."

"Then Angela and Winston finally got the drop on Reaper and wanted someone to keep an eye on him," Torbjorn interjected. "So one of the few times they used this profiler was to imprint her on an AI branched from Athena."

"One of the few times…?"

"Imagine what could happen if this thing is used to imprint the wrong person on an AI," the Swede asked rhetorically.

She nodded. It was not hard to fathom the consequences. "So, they imprinted her personality on an AI, and gave her a sizable database to work on…"

"On top of her journals," Torbjorn completed. "Mercy wanted her AI constrained by programming, ethics, personality and experience."

"As close as you're going to get to a real person," Morrison finished.

"I understand why Anika would be so emotional…"

"We all are." Morrison smiled. She could tell it was not an usual gesture on him. "Mercy was part of the soul of Overwatch, lieutenant. The sacrifice she made… well, I need not telling you about it."

Her mind was beginning to process what she just had been told. "If this ever broke out into the news…"

"It would make for a long series of groundbreaking discoveries."

Unconsciously Shepard eased her shoulders - and once again it was a mistake. Morrison noticed it. "Ah, your wounds. We should have those looked at."

"The corpsman on the London looked them over. He said…"

"Lieutenant, your CO submitted us the complete report of the incident. Let us have a look at that shoulder."

She saw there was no point in rejecting the offer. "Alright, sir."

The current Overwatch medical specialist was one Mila Palukhina. While her name sounded as Slavic as they came, her features were anything but: judging from her slanted eyes, dark blonde hair and tanned skin, her ancestry was a peculiar mix of Latin, Russian and Japanese blood. " _Priviet, Liena!_ " she greeted Tracer. "What do you bring me today?"

"Hello, luv! Meet lieutenant Shepard. She's Alliance Navy. She's had a run-in with an old… acquaintance of ours."

The woman's brow knotted. "Well, I'll see soon enough. Let me pull your medical records…" She tapped a few commands on her own omni-tool while she kept her gray eyes on a screen. She scanned the file quickly and nodded. "No way you would have made it through the ICT course if you weren't in top physical shape. Right shoulder and spine, _da?_ Okay, there's a dressing room down that hallway. Please undress, put on a gown, and come back here."

It was clear to Shepard that Palukhina knew exactly what to look for. Some gentle probing with her hands, then a thorough and methodical scan with a specific device attached to her omni-tool, then a small sample of blood and tissue drawn. It scarcely hurt or bothered her, if at all.

She was not surprised when the results came back half an hour later and Morrison was present as well. What she did not expect was to see Anika Ziegler there too. Still, Palukhina's face told her everything she needed to know. Her heart sank inside her chest. "I'm sorry, lieutenant, but the news… not good. I wish I had better for you."

Aaliyah willed her face into an expressionless mask. "I'm listening."

"There are signs of… accelerated tissue decay. And at the same time your body is increasing its metabolic rate to compensate… And it's spreading."

Morrison was dour. "Reaper became what he is after he came down with this."

Shepard glared at her. "And he got it how?"

Unexpectedly Anika spoke. Her voice was high and thin. "My mother… she was trying to save him. It was the aftermath of the attack on the Switzerland HQ. Damaged equipment and supplies…"

"Nobody knows what happened," Morrison cut in. "He was almost dead, but Mercy brought him back. In that form."

Shepard tried to apprehend what she heard: "Let me get this straight: I caught some kind of disease that lets me transform into some sort of shadow-stuff cloud?"

"Nobody knows how that happened," Anika answered. "There was an accident. Exactly what happened no one knows. Only my mother did but she left no records behind. We don't know what could happen to you if we let this thing run its course."

At once she began to consider the situation as the tactical officer she was. "Choices?"

Palukhina replied, "Only two reasonable ones. We can amputate the arm and try to implant a limb grown from stem cells. It's a long process, _da,_ takes years, but in the end you won't notice the difference."

Too long. "Next?"

"We implant you with a bionic arm. Every bit as good as flesh and bone, if not more durable, except for a little maintenance. Some of our own operatives have these. You met Genji Shimada before."

With that name, it could only mean that silver-and-neon-green Asian man. He was indistinguishable from a normal man… except that he was part metal, as opposed to wearing a suit of powered armor. While Alliance soldiers expected to be outfitted with some kind of bionics at some point during their careers, it was never a pleasant thing to dwell upon - least of all when the time for choosing was now. "And if I'm unreasonable and I don't want either alternative, what then?"

Morrison was uncomfortable but answered with his raspy voice: "We help you fight through the disease, if that's what it is, and help you develop and master whatever talents it can possibly grant you, if it grants any. But this is uncharted territory, lieutenant. Let me make it clear for you: we don't know if it's a disease, and we don't know whether it grants you any talents. If you ask me it's more likely it will end up just killing you."


	4. First Contact

Numbani - Overwatch Memorial

"Let's try again. Hold the charge," Anika instructed. "You can overcome that initial jolt. Remember, you will feel some feedback that will tell you when it's ready for release."

Shepard tried again. The lens in the projector on her left palm glittered, then glowed fiercely with turquoise light. She shaped her hand like the open claws of a bird of prey. Tendrils of energy arced from her metallic fingertips towards the projector and a strong jolt shook her; a tiny sphere of blinding blue-green light flickered briefly over the lens, then it burst with an audible bang.

Aaliyah sighed, closed her eyes and clenched her jaw in frustration, then she eased her shoulders. It felt strange and cold. The limb was fully articulate, light and very strong, in addition to packing an assortment of built-in toys; she would always have a squad-shield generator and an omni-tool on her, for instance. This projector was fancier tech, however.

"The pistol version was much simpler to use."

"Don't worry. It takes time. You have to learn how to use it like a muscle."

"I don't have time. I don't know when I may be recalled into active duty."

"It's worth it, let me tell you. Mother used to work with one of the first true hardlight engineers. She could do miracles with that, and that was before the mass effect principles had been discovered."

The lieutenant rolled her eyes. "Don't get started with that again. Last time you tried to explain to me how hardlight and mass effect fields mesh together I understood exactly zero."

Anika grinned. "I'm sorry. I tend to get carried away sometimes." She handed her a bottle and Shepard drank thirstily. "It's tiring work, isn't it?"

"I'm trying to think of something I've done that compares with it. Some of the biofeedback exercises we did back at the ICT course… we learned how to slow our heartbeats and lower our blood pressure in case we got shot," she explained upon noticing the inquisitive look.

"I never left Earth myself. Too absorbed. Medical career."

Shepard washed away the sweat with a towel and smiled. "Runs in the family, huh?"

Anika shrugged. "Couldn't really think of anything else." She sat on the single bench available on the rehabilitation room and sighed. "Sometimes I think what would have happened if mom hadn't died."

"She died saving the world. If we have to kick the bucket I can think of few better ways."

The girl was silent for a while. It was difficult to tell her apart from the Mercy avatar she had seen in the Cabeus crater. "You know, lieutenant… I didn't think it would hurt this much. I didn't even remember her."

Shepard sat next to Ziegler, searching for words. "My parents live in one of the habitats on Mars. Both mom and dad were career soldiers themselves, gunship pilots. They saw some really ugly things. He lost both legs when an omnium shot him down over Siberia. I talked to him last week, telling him about what happened to me and how the Overwatch was helping me out. He replied that his unit was in the thick of the fight when the news about your mom broke out. Everyone was pissed off that her crew had been on their own and without support. That turned things around." She looked at Anika in the eyes. "Not all tears are bad. If you ask me, I feel that the word 'hero' has been overused, everyone gets slapped with it nowadays." Then she grinned. "But if there is a heaven somewhere, your mother was welcomed there with a fanfare, a standing ovation and a triumph the likes of which no person has ever seen."

Mercy's daughter smiled widely. "I'll remember those words."

Then Shepard's omni-tool rang. She tapped it, and a hologram popped up: the avatar of Athena, Overwatch's AI. "Lieutenant Shepard, your presence is requested on the briefing room by the commander."

"I'll be there immediately." She glanced at Ziegler. "Guess leave time is over."

"Hold on a second," she requested. "I'm coming too."

As both women made their way through the underground complex, Shepard noticed the hurried strides and dour faces of other operatives they came across. _Something's up._

The briefing room was built like an amphitheater, a circular hall with a high ceiling, which made for great acoustics. The place could seat around a hundred people, and Shepard noticed it was packed tight. All the faces she knew were present: Oxton, Torbjorn, Shimada and, of course, Morrison. They all were terse and expectant.

"Crew, I have news, and it's not the kind we like," the Overwatch commander began dryly. "First, as we all already know, two weeks ago there was a mishap in the Moon that caused an old enemy of ours to resurface." A hologram projector on the round scenario activated to show the grim visage of Shepard's attacker. The briefing room was already silent, but the atmosphere became stifling with tension. "We received news earlier today that Reaper infiltrated an installation of the UN Space Command Authority on northern Scotland last night. The breach went completely undetected until early in the morning today. In fact, we would have doubted it was him, if not for the security footage provided by the Authority…" Shepard stopped listening short of this point, and cared little for the feeds that showed the leather-clad assassin as he characteristically turned into a cloud of smoke and jumped from place to place: _How the HELL did he get here from the Moon?!_

"Casualties?" an operative asked quietly.

"None", Morrison replied. "This was what prompted me to ask for proof. Reaper chose to incapacitate the guards and lock them up instead of killing them. It's against his MO, but perhaps his prolonged confinement has had an effect on his behavior patterns. It's something we'll have to establish." Aaliyah's stomach churned at this. _Against his behavior patterns. Sure. Tell that to Fisher, team-2 and my men._

Morrison continued: "Bad news is, he got his hands on some extremely sensitive data that is also scarcely a few hours old. Data that involves a guest of ours from the Alliance Navy." At once she was attentive. "An SOS was received at Arcturus from Pokhara. Lieutenant Shepard, who is here with us today, was stationed there last year and can tell us more about the place."

She stood up on cue. "Pokhara is an omnic colony built by the Shambali, but also has a small human population. It's an arid world, with little in the way of native life. They export rare earths and metals. Last thing I heard was that a vein of eezo had been struck." Heads nodded around her.

"That possibly explains what follows. In the SOS the omnic and human residents claimed to be under attack by aliens."

Thunderous silence followed.

The Overwatch commander looked at all the faces gathered there, one by one, young and old, fresh and weathered. Some startled, most in shock, a scant few only concerned. Then the mix of emotions gave way to the cold-blooded professionalism he expected of them and they looked back at him, expecting to hear more.

Athena, the AI, continued instead. "A few days before the SOS was sent, an Alliance scouting force found and activated another trans-stellar accelerator on a nearby star. Shortly afterwards, all contact was lost with the scouts."

"We have made first contact, ladies and gentlemen," Morrison stated. "In the worst possible way. The Alliance is mobilizing and an alert has been sent for all forces under the UN banner. That includes us. No concrete orders have been issued yet, though I believe we are expected to join in."

"Aren't we ever, sir," a voice quipped.

"That's who we are, people. We are Overwatch," Morrison replied defiantly, and some steady yeses answered his boast. "We've always risen to the occasion, and we won't fail to do it now. For starters, I've contacted commander Paul Lefevre of the SSV London to request some space to billet our squads. He's agreed. Lieutenant Shepard here is to be our liaison. I don't know how many of us will be asked to join in, but those who want to volunteer should report to her." At once scores of hands shot up. "Do it later. Make sure we get all questions about this out of the way first. I imagine everyone has at least one. Layali?" He pointed at a dark-skinned woman with an _udjat_ tattoo under her right eye.

"Yes, sir. What do we know about the military capabilities of the attackers?"

Athena answered that, as she displayed fragments of video footage showing fighters of exotic design and large arrow-shaped vessels drifting over purple alien skies. "Analysis of the videos sent with the SOS show that they are disciplined and organised. The message stated that the habitats for humans were not hit, but the areas where omnics resided were shown no particular consideration. They appear to have advanced knowledge of mass effect technology."

Morrison pointed at someone else: "Next? Genji?"

"Have these aliens attempted to communicate? Have the colonists tried?"

"That is, as of this moment, unknown," Athena replied. "The message mentions neither broadcasts nor deputations sent by the aliens stating their demands."

"Who knows how many messages have they tried to send and got blocked out," someone else commented.

"For the moment, Pokhara is completely isolated; any attempts to establish a communication with the colony have failed. Arcturus has discontinued further attempts to deny intelligence to the enemy."

"Next? Cumberland?"

"Any hard data on enemy strength?"

"Only some figures based on long range scans. Given the sensor data, the enemy force is estimated to be composed of at least one vessel of cruiser displacement, four frigates and about a dozen escorts."

"Typical wolfpack formation," Shepard mused half to herself.

"Lieutenant?" Morrison asked attentively.

"Sir, while it's too early yet to jump to conclusions, I believe we have yet to see the true strength of these aliens. Arcturus has usually two task forces fully operational at any time, with a third one rotated out for refitting and upgrades. Each one consists of two carriers and half a dozen cruisers at least."

* * *

As soon as the briefing was complete, Shepard got to know personally all the Overwatch agents currently based on the Numbani complex. They were, as she learned, a diverse lot: experts for every military specialty imaginable, plus an eclectic collection of irregulars with unique skills. The Alliance used the charm of worlds beyond counting and sights outside anything imagination could make up to attract recruits, but pound for pound they could not even hope to begin to compete with the quality of the manpower staffing that agency. Joining it had been her own dream, but she did not have anything like the experience needed to qualify for a posting there. She was a soldier, a good one to be sure, but that was it.

And now, there she was, having dinner on the very Overwatch HQ as she cautiously searched the nets for references to the mind blowing revelations of the day. There were none to be seen, or at least she had found none during the hour or so she had spent looking. Those in the know had no reason to reveal it before it was time, and the elite forces being put on alert were too disciplined to mention it to the media. There was that Reaper bastard, too, but whatever his agenda was, apparently it was not in his plans to reveal whatever information he had.

Someone approached her: "Coffee?"

"Not going to refuse that one, Lena."

Tracer handed her a large mug. "You don't appear to miss your arm much."

Shepard snorted. "Yeah, I have to get used to the cold yet." She took a sip, then immediately put it down: "Holy shit, girl! What the hell is it that you drink?"

"Oh, it's like Italian ristretto but extra strong. Grampy Torbjorn brews it." She smirked. "What were you expecting, some five o'clock Rosy Lee?"

Aaliyah glared at the beverage. It looked like crude oil fresh from a well. "A heads-up would have been nice. Or do I look that wasted to you?" Now forewarned, she took a longer pull. It felt like binging on rocket fuel. She put it down again and shook her head. "Let me guess. Four mugs a day."

"Uh-uh. Six."

Again she snorted. "That explains a few things."

Tracer laughed. "Winston used to make that joke."

"Now that you mention him, I have heard of him a few times already but I heard nothing from him."

Oxton shook her head. "He's… not well. Gorillas live into their forties at most. Winston's pushin' sixty now and spends most of his time in bed." Then she noted Shepard's look: "What?"

"Correct me if I'm mistaken, most of what I know about your crew is what I saw in the media while I was a kid… didn't he, um, fix you?"

She nodded and smiled. "Absolutely. I owe him everything, but whom I gonna help if I stand around all gloom and doom because there's nothing I can do for 'im? Mercy and Mila are doing their best, but his time's come and gone. 'Sides, he's all alone now."

The lieutenant recalled what a nasty piece of business the reclaiming of the Horizon Lunar Colony had been and looked aside. "Honor his memory through action?"

"It has to be that way with everyone for me, luv. I'm not going the way o' brown bread 'cause I'm all wrinkly and old. Someone'll have to do that for me."

"If they can." She was both marveled and horrified by the idea. "So you're a goddamn immortal. And a time hopper on top of that."

"There you have it. And the world is only getting bigger." She sat next to Shepard and emptied her own mug in a long pull. "That's better. Now, what's on your mind?"

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees. "Well, there's the obvious… why initiate first contact by bombing the hell out of a colony? We just drew the galactic short straw and of all possible neighbors we got the mean one?"

Tracer shrugged. "Nobody who tried playing big guy here got what he wanted in the end."

"Keyword on that phrase being 'here'. Nobody said it had to be like that elsewhere."

"They got a pattern for doing this, do they? I mean, they had all those fancy fighters flying in formation on that video we saw. They have to make some sense."

"Yeah. But they don't have to make sense to us."

"All we have to do is figuring out how they make sense to themselves, then."

Shepard chuckled and shook her head slowly. Plucky fell well short of describing her. "And put a few high-velocity rounds through their heads if need be."

"If needs be, alright. And the not so obvious?"

"…Reaper's game."

"Oh. It's mighty strange, I'll give you that much. That chap never took any prisoners."

"He didn't show us that consideration." A deep breath, then she shook her head. "You should have seen what he did to my crew…"

"I know, luv. It was not that long ago that I don't remember. Eh, some things, you wish you could unsee."

"I'll drink another swig of this poison to that." She did. It was strong enough to resemble liquor, and she was sure that adding alcohol to the mix would not change the flavor one bit. "I'm not going to catch much in the way of sleep tonight." She was tired, alright, but the huge dose of caffeine was starting to kick in. She closed her eyes, but then opened them wide as the specter of Reaper returned to haunt her again. "Fucking asshole… I swear I'm going to lock him up and throw away the key. Tell me, what was he after when you fought him?"

Tracer sat on the other side of the table. "You have to ask Jack for the particulars. Some of that is still locked up tight. What I can tell you without having him yell at me again is that he made a name for himself hunting us. He was with the Talon bunch and set his sights on any ex-agent he could find. For years we thought he had a hand in Mercy's death, but then I found out about how she helped Winston lock him up. So, what he's after…" She shrugged.

The lieutenant stood up and stretched. "Oh well. I'm not going to waste any more of my time looking for answers at this point then. I should be going to sleep but I could use some more practice with this hardlight projector thing."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ please forgive me if I have incorrectly used the little cockney cant I've tried to sprinkle here and there. If I made a mistake and you can correct me, by all means, get in touch.


	5. Rematch

Sol System - SSV London, Saturn orbit

" _Tovarich Shepard'yeva,_ I have something for you," Mila had announced proudly after finding her on the PT barracks.

"I'm listening."

"The commander has cleared you for this. He believes you should know about it." And then she had handed her the tablet computer, bid her _'paka'_ , and left. She had put a temporary stop to her hardlight projection practice to scan the contents: Angela Ziegler's and Winston's research on Reaper's containment - how they had used hardlight shielding technology to create a field he could not breach in smoke form. The intent was obvious: now that she always carried a hardlight projector with her and she was getting increasingly skilled with it, Morrison wanted her to know what to do in case their common enemy came calling.

Now she was a bit regretful of her determined mindset, because there was a * _lot*_ of highly specific technobabble she could only marginally comprehend, and she could not turn to anyone but the other Overwatch crew for help, but they were busy as hell - Morrison had increased the pressure on his teams and was putting them through the harshest training simulations they could think of. Her own crews were undergoing similar challenges, and the difficulty was extreme: being grazed by a stray fragment meant you were automatically out of the fight, which was only logical because there was no way of knowing what kind of weaponry the enemy would bring to bear against them.

And despite that, she refused to put the white paper down until she had gotten the gist of it. Eventually she would have to give up, though, because thoroughly understanding what was all that about required entirely different skillsets and training to those of her own. So far she could get that 'hardlight' had 'hard' and 'light' phases: sometimes it behaved as solid matter, sometimes it behaved as photons, and sometimes it behaved as both. It flew in the face of common sense and was crazy enough to give her a headache -and so it had done once already-, but nobody could deny it worked, and it had been the underlying principle behind shields for years. The advent of mass effect technology meant that nearly unbreachable barriers could be created by combining both - except that nobody had yet figured out how to do so and still fire through that defense at the enemy.

Problem was, that limited explanation still did not suffice to explain the many, many things a skilled user could do with a hardlight projector: temporarily bridge a chasm, create a 'laser whip', or point-defend against incoming ordnance. Craft of all kinds were outfitted nowadays with such systems, but someone whose reflexes were fast enough could do it by hand. It was insanely hard, borderline superhumanly so, but still doable.

She reproached herself for mentally straying away from the topic again, but after a few minutes she had to admit that her mind was simply fed up with that. A glance at the clock, then she put down the tablet, suited up, and walked out of the barracks.

She came upon Martinsson immediately. "Ma'am Doomfist," she joked as she saluted.

Shepard laughed. "Watch it, Shieldmaiden, or you'll find yourself on the business end of it."

The tall blonde smiled. "Someone had to be the first, ma'am."

"You mean everyone's too scared of me to crack that joke at me?"

"Everyone's been too protective of you to crack that joke at you, ma'am."

She had to admit it was true. Her troopers had suffered the blow as well, and even if she had put them through a literal hell in recent days because of the unexplained alert and deployment orders they had received, she had not heard anything more than the usual grunts and complaints. "You've been all great so far."

"Even if you've been wiping the floor with our sorry asses?"

"Have I ever pushed you around without good reason?"

"Not once, ma'am," she admitted freely.

"This is another such time, specialist," Shepard told her squarely. "We wouldn't have such guests on board otherwise."

"Copy that loud and clear, ma'am," Martinsson acknowledged as seriously. Two scores of Overwatch specialists were sharing their quarters. Astrid swallowed her burning desire to ask a dozen different questions: there was a lot of awe and talking alright, but if they would be deploying alongside the stuff legends were made of -a saying quite literal in this case-, just what were they going to find when they arrived? "We are sailing into harm's way, we know it, but we got your back. We all do. Seriously."

Shepard fought hard to suppress the glow that filled her. "That's the mindset I want from you. Now your team is going to need you again."

Astrid knew it was a simulation, and recently they had been getting so stupidly hard that they were pointless and downright impossible to pass, but Shepard was right; she would not put her troopers through such stress without having a damned good reason. "We'll give you the best we've got, ma'am."

The best Assault Specialist Martinsson and her squad could give was far from the best their Overwatch colleagues could do, but Overwatch was the best there was. She would get her troops there, but it was neither a short way, nor an easy one. "I expect no less. Suit up, specialist."

"Yes ma'am."

She watched her go, casually noting how other male troopers followed her bouncing hips with their eyes; one of them noted her gaze and arched his eyebrows mischievously, gesture she accepted with a small grin. Astrid was quite the looker, but men (and women) had quickly learned that she was not one to dick around when someone displeasured her. Which made her job easier. 'Fraternization' problems had plagued the armed forces of Earth enough that the Alliance wanted to have nothing with that and made a point of not abandoning harassed soldiers to their own devices, but if they could take care of themselves, so much the better.

She entered the simulation room herself, donned all the simulation gear and sat to wait for the 'go' signal from the technician, but noticed that three troopers -Salazar, Lemarchand and Aliyev- were missing. She tapped her own omni-tool and sent them an alert, but her mind instantly assumed something was wrong when the alerts rang without being acknowledged. "Harriot," she instructed her new second-in-command, "you're in charge. Direct this exercise as usual."

"Yes ma'am," the man acknowledged her as she took off the bulky helmet. A few queries to the ship AI, and she saw that the omni-tools of the absentees were all on the same place - deck 7, cargo hold 5. She knew without having to look it up that the troopers were at their usual damage control stations.

Except that there were no reports of any damage anywhere on the ship.

She went back to her own quarters and retrieved her sidearm, sent a silent alert to her superior officer, then took the elevator. The cargo holds were mostly the province of non-sentient worker robots and, in the mind of civilian visitors, some marines running unsanctioned moonshine stills; that one was a myth leftover from earlier centuries that stubbornly refused to die, and she had simply stopped correcting people whenever they mentioned it. Recruits quickly learned that the place was as tightly monitored as anywhere else on the ship.

But the place was cold.

Shepard felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand and a slight trembling as a torrent of adrenaline rushed into her bloodstream. Sidearm on her right hand and hardlight projector primed on her left palm, she advanced cautiously down the hallway, jumping from cover to cover, as she approached the passageway leading to cargo hold 1. Nothing. Door closed and sealed. Same thing happened with cargo holds 2, 3, and 4…

The main personnel access hatch for cargo hold 5 was open. Three bodies were sprawled on the floor, two men, one woman - Aliyev, Lemarchand and Salazar. Nobody moved.

Silently, Shepard approached Salazar and checked for a pulse. There. She tapped her omni-tool to send a silent alert to the bridge while her senses went immediately into overdrive, without even stopping to consider why the anomaly had not been reported by the AI. A part of her mind frantically picked at the enigma for a few instants, though: they were all alive, so…

The place was colder than the rest of the deck.

Crates and containers arranged in a grid-like pattern filled the hold, only barely lit by some emergency lights. She looked behind and ahead of herself, saw nothing, continued moving, walked ahead towards the crossroads...

-and her metal arm almost missed the butt stroke that was aimed at her solar plexus.

She found herself staring into the empty eyes of a skull-like mask.

 _You just had to come around looking, had you._

Overwhelming terror almost numbed her, and only her trained instincts allowed her to bring her sidearm to bear and squeeze off six shots. Half of them connected and her enemy gasped, but not for a moment did she believe she had knocked him out of the fight. Somehow she managed to summon a shred of composure and her left hand blazed with a hardlight charge, but her assailant batted her fist aside with his gun and her blast went wild. Alarms and klaxons started blaring immediately. Reaper brought up his weapons and she had barely a split-second to raise her squad-shield before he squeezed the trigger. A cold laughter grated her ears: _Not as puny now._

"You don't know the half of it, asshole," she muttered through gritted teeth and fired again from behind her shield. The rounds punched Reaper around like a rag doll before his form became diffuse and he turned into a shadow spectre that now loomed over her. Immediately she curled up into a ball and rolled away, using the projector to wrap herself in a protective hardlight sheathing. Panting and now behind cover, she popped her defensive bubble for air as she checked the heat on her sidearm, peeked around the corner - and he was gone. "You fucker…"

Tendrils of inky black smoke were all around the place. Panic exploded in her mind for a second when she realized that he could jump at her from anywhere now: too many crates, too many corners, too many places to hide. Quickly she looked around for alternatives, and her instinct shouted at her to get out of the maze and back into the tighter, narrower corridors. She readied up her projector and dashed for the hatch-

-and almost tripped on the boot that stuck out in her way. She jumped over her enemy, rolled on the ground, triggered the squad-shield behind her and squeezed off a blind barrage.

 _You don't learn, do you?_

Perspiration streamed down her face and covered her like a second skin. _What does he want here? What's he doing in a military cruiser with 500 troops aboard? Surely he can't hope to kill them all… or can he,_ she briefly wondered, and her blood chilled even more. But this was no suicide bomber, Reaper was as cold-blooded and efficient as murderous mercenaries came.

Then Tracer's voice rang in her mind: _'he made a name for himself hunting us'._

 _He's after the Overwatch crew._

 _I'm secondary. I'm not dead, we're not dead because he doesn't want us dead. He wants the Overwatch agents dead…_

She drew upon her training and summoned all of her discipline and focus into slowing down her breath and pulse. Her senses cleared while her mind wrestled with the terror that threatened to swamp her again and grappled with the problem: _how to use that?_

She was crouching next to the limp bodies of Aliyev, Lemarchand and Salazar, blocking the hatch out of the hold. Armed marines should be coming any time now. The moment they did, the only way out he would have would be to kill everyone, and when that happened she knew that Lefevre would make a grim choice and vent the whole deck into space. Reaper probably knew that, too, so his objective now would be to get past her, whether she lived or died.

 _Unless I trick him into thinking I've left him an opening, I'm fucking dead, and everyone on this deck with me._

Her heart racing in her chest, pretending caution, looking every which way, though with all her senses focused behind her, she started advancing, squad-shield deployed and sidearm at the ready.

But the enemy was not lurking on a side passage between the crates, he was stalking her from atop them. Only a wisp of black smoke obscuring an emergency light warned her to raise her shield before a burst of gunfire raked her. Then he was jumping her and enveloping her like a black cloud - and out of desperation she madly triggered her projector. Instead of a built-up charge, the device let out a stream of bright energy that literally attached itself to her attacker, and a stink of scorched metal filled the air. Reaper hissed and pulled away, leaving a trail of dark smoke in his wake. An angry growl reached her: _You really are starting to ANNOY me!_

"Bring it on," she panted, half to herself, back against a wall, eyes darting all around her as she tried to catch her breath. Her enemy did not give her a moment's pause, but instead of shooting at her he seemed to wait for that exact moment when she was not looking his way - and simply reached for and grabbed her wrists with an iron grip. The pistol fell uselessly to the floor. It was excruciatingly cold, but having already faced this enemy before was probably what allowed her to resist the paralyzing horror and struggle desperately against him, appealing to every ounce of close combat skill she had in the process. Out of reflex she twisted her arms and broke free from the viselike hold, then immediately followed up with twin palm strikes to the ears, but the hood and the mask softened what should have been a stunning blow. The savage kick knocked the air out of her lungs but still she did not go down, pure adrenaline keeping her going, every inch of her being screaming that to fall or to withdraw now was to die. She parried two punches and dodged a knee aimed at her stomach, and riposted with an elbow strike of her own: it was a solid hit, but it did not seem to cause anything. Again the viselike grasp, and then they were trying to wrestle each other into the ground. A tiny fraction of her brain noticed that his breath was colder than a glacier as well: "Just… what… the hell… are… you?!" This time there was no reply other than some stressful grunts: whatever he was, he also got tired.

Then, finally, there were echoes of other voices. Her heart jumped inside her chest: _TRACER!_ Reaper also heard it and it distracted him for a sliver of an instant, but that was all that Shepard needed: a torsion of her wrist, then his arm snapped. There was nothing, not even a grunt, but it certainly hurt because his struggles lessened visibly; she seized the moment and shoved her left hand into his masked face: "EAT THIS!" A blinding flash of turquoise light, and the black shape was blown away from her, to melt away in smoke upon smashing against a wall.

"Bridge, this is Shepard," she panted after tapping her omni-tool. "Reaper… is on the ship. Cargo hold 5 has to… has to be quarantined immediately."

Armed figures appeared: "She's here!" Tracer was the first to reach her, pistols in hand, her own eyes vigilant.

"Are you alright, _tovarich_?" A burly woman in powered armor asked solicitously. The tag 'ZARYANOVA' was etched on her breast plate.

"Yes, yes… just…" More troopers were clustering now near the hatch. She caught a glimpse of a woman in a Mercy response suit: Anika.

"Get her out of here," Zaryanova ordered.

"No way!" Shepard protested. "That fucker killed nine of my men and… and almost got three more, I'm not letting him go!"

A man handed her a flak jacket. "Trust the woman," he advised with an Asian accent. "She stood her ground and lived." She recognized him by the contours of his armor: this one was Genji Shimada, the cybernetic ninja. She nodded in thanks.

"You have a squad-shield," the Russian woman noted. "Cover our support. They can use the help."

"He's… after you," Shepard warned between pants. Zaryanova smirked in response:

"Reaper hunted our ranks for years. It's nothing new."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ an enormous **THANK YOU** to Brainsbeforebullets for the proofreading and the advice.


	6. Sleeping Giant

Arcturus system - SSV London

The silence in the observation room was colossal. On the other side of the glass, the bone-white mask floated in midair surrounded by a cloud of swirling smoke. No eyes were visible, but everyone could feel the cold glare as Reaper stared at them.

Lefevre was unsettled. "I don't like having that on my ship."

Lieutenant commander Juliana Visconti, the grizzled officer in charge of the marine complement of the London and Shepard's immediate superior, was equally perturbed. She was going to quip that those had been their orders but thought better of it. "At least we got some specialists to deal with him."

The captain scowled and grunted. He had had to vacate the hold where Shepard had held off Reaper until the Overwatch teams had arrived to contain and capture him. The fact that his ship had one less cargo hold available did not bother him as much as the utter and complete _wrongness_ of the thing.

A few steps away from them, Shepard and Morrison stood side by side, looking back at the masked wraith in silence. Aaliyah had spent most of last night in the medical bay, first, being checked out herself extensively by Cameron, Palukhina and Ziegler, and then looking after her men. News of her confrontation had blazed through the ship and she had been toasted by both her fellow servicemen and the Overwatch agents, but she felt no pride, only unease. It was all a blur in her mind. She could barely remember anything besides the cold and the terror.

"Has he said anything, sir?" she asked quietly.

Morrison shook his head, arms crossed over his chest, "Don't expect him to."

Yet another enigma to add to the pile. What had been Reaper's plan? What had he hoped to accomplish by sneaking aboard? On those frantic minutes she had surmised his targets had been the Overwatch agents, but if that had been the case, then why not simply vanish from the cargo hold after incapacitating her troopers?

Why allow her to hold him off? The more she reviewed the automatic recordings of the fight on her omni-tool, the less convinced she was that she had legitimately defeated him. She had only delayed him. Why allow himself to be captured?

And why had he stopped killing?

The questions had become one too many. "Sir-ma'am," she asked, noticing the imposing presence of Zaryanova behind her, "why?"

The Russian woman noted her unease. She laid one of her strong hands on Shepard's shoulder: "You're smart, but don't be too smart, girl."

"Whatever he had in mind, he won't harm anyone while he's in there," Morrison muttered. And he added under his breath, "And considering where we're going…"

 _If worst comes to worst, he goes down with this ship,_ Shepard's mind completed, and she felt ice in her marrow. The London was an upgunned cruiser, but no Alliance ship had ever put its weapons to use against anything heavier than pirates or raiders, which rarely were bigger than a frigate, and not a match for them. The staggering volume of firepower that was being assembled to confront the aliens did not make her breathe any easier. _If the combined might of the whole 2nd Fleet is not enough to take on one of their cruisers and half a dozen escorts we're all well and truly fucked._

 _Goddamn, you're having such happy thoughts today._

An omni-tool rang somewhere—apparently Morrison's, because the man came out of his staring contest with the entity beyond the thick crystal and turned to face her: "The briefing is due in a few minutes. We would like you to join us, lieutenant."

She turned in surprise towards Visconti. Her superior nodded: "It's been arranged. You're one of our liaisons with Overwatch, Shepard. And after what happened yesterday, I imagine they'd want to keep a close eye on you." Her voice was saying something else to Morrison: _don't you go and steal a promising young officer away from me, you hear me?_

"Ma'am, am I being transferred?"

Visconti let some long seconds pass before answering with a dry and final: "No."

Stunned, Shepard saluted and walked out of the repurposed cargo hold after Morrison and Zaryanova, and cautiously asked, "Sir, what was all that about?"

"You probably have guessed already, lieutenant." The Overwatch commander did not break stride.

She dropped her jaw for an instant, then composed herself: "I'm not leaving my squads, sir. Least of all now."

"I know. We're not going to interfere with that. But supposing this turns out well, I want you to consider it."

 _An Overwatch agent. Me._

It was, if anything, the realization of her dreams.

And she was being asked by the man who had inspired her career choice.

"As you said: supposing this turns out well, I can consider it."

"No more than what I asked."

* * *

The troopers stood upright when Shepard walked in. "At ease."

She looked at her men, one by one: Aliyev, Danesti, Harriot, Lemarchand, Lemetti, Martinsson, Moronta, Salazar, Westmoreland. They looked at her differently now. So had the Overwatch crew to an extent, but it was more pronounced among her subordinates. Much more respect, awe even. However, that only made the doubting voices speak louder in her mind. Was she really worthy of that? Or had Reaper placed her on a spot where she would be expected to deliver more than she could?

 _Be smart, but not too smart… damn if she wasn't right._ Aaliyah berated herself. She was not a freshly minted officer just off boot camp and still wet behind the ears, she was a veteran marine on her fifth tour of duty, and even if she doubted she had genuinely beaten Reaper, she could not show that before her men. Least of all, considering what was coming up.

"First, loadout news," she started. "We're breaking out the railguns. Standard stuff isn't going to cut it here. Arcturus got one last transmission yesterday." An omni-tool command, and the lights on the ready room dimmed as a hologram projector started running to display fragments of a video.

The atmosphere became so thick a knife could have cut it into pieces. The creatures in sight were obscured by helmets and armor, but at first glance it was immediately evident that they were mostly similar to humans except for their digitigrade stance. They also were taller than the prisoners they seemed to be escorting into a transport vessel of some kind, and wielded weapons not unlike theirs in shape. A pile of dismantled or shot Omnics could be partially seen at one point.

The camera was quickly turned around to show the face of a brunette girl who would perhaps be on her early twenties at best. She was quickly talking in whispers, no doubt trying to record as much as possible without being caught by the invaders:

"There's more, standard issue armor is useless against their guns. Shields and barriers are much better, I think they didn't know what to do with them, though they got shields of their own. They don't take any chances, though, our sniper killed a few of them before they called in orbital strike on his nest. They're freaking good at it, they only hit what they want to hit." Then the image froze.

"That's all we've got," Shepard stated. "We suppose the message was broken down in multiple parts so that at least we would receive some of it." Again she surveyed the faces in the room. Some were livid, some fists were clenched tight. All were pale.

Another omni-tool command, and the video was replaced by a schematic of the colony.

"The aliens have hit hard the garrison and the omnic quarters," she informed, pointed out the relevant structures on the map, and continued, "as the girl reported, apparently they don't deal in nonsense and whenever they came out upon some sort of strongpoint, they blew it to bits from orbit. That's probably why the military governor surrendered the colony yesterday." That elicited gasps on part of some of her men.

The most seasoned of them nodded instead: "Tough on your pride, but if you can't fight back, holding out will only get more civilians killed," Yuri Aliyev noted. He was an immensely strong moustached youth in his mid twenties, his hair dark, eyes green.

Shepard saw that his spot-on comment was met by hard looks: "Our mission is to protect lives, people, not to earn glory," she stressed. "Governor Williams had that mission. Pundits will tear him a new one, but he's down there. He knows what's going on, and did what he judged best. Just remember what happened to me because someone didn't trust my advice."

That worked, she noticed. Still, the redhead, freckled Yelena Danesti clench her jaw. "If we could get there a little sooner—"

Aaliyah cut her short: "We can't. I'll repeat this one again and again if I have to: whoever wins the recon battle wins the whole battle, and so far they have the upper hand." She turned again her attention to the map. "We'll be working again with Wenner's and Minovsky's squads. Our whole company has been assigned two primary objectives: establish a safe perimeter around the habitats and get as many civilians in the clear as we possibly can, and set up gates. I've already gone over this part with the Overwatch engineers: they suggest the best places for that are here, here and here." She pointed, in quick succession, a hangar next to the starport, a warehouse by the strip mine, and a shed by the main power plant. "Before you say it: yes, I know, none of these places are close to the habitats, but when the enemy discovers what the gates are for they will want them shut down immediately and we can't have firefights breaking out near civvies. I also know that we can't cover all three sites by ourselves so we're going to focus on this one." She pointed at the hangar. "Also, a platoon of heavies will be making the drop with us and they are attached to our unit under my command, so we got backup - but they're going to draw a lot of enemy fire so we need to keep them covered."

A few minutes were spent next outlining each one's individual objectives: Aliyev, clearly taking after the Russian national idol, was their frontman and heavy weapons specialist, and he was meant to either bombard entrenched positions with indirect fire or to cut a swath through them in close combat. Danesti and Salazar were their medics, so their duties were pretty straightforward - keeping people alive, "human or otherwise, is that clear?" Martinsson -adequately dubbed 'Shieldmaiden' by Shepard- was another frontliner, but her duty was dangerous - she had to draw and absorb enemy fire, and to that end she had a squad-shield and deployable spherical shield projectors. Lemetti and Moronta were their snipers and spotters, which meant they were to keep their eyes open for threats and priority targets. Jacques Lemarchand and Jane Westmoreland were their engineers and demolitions experts, so they were proficient with hardlight projectors and all sorts of boobytraps, fixed defenses and mines - what they would need to hold on to a position after taking it. Benedict Harriot was her second-in-command, and in charge of the second fireteam. "Questions?"

Martinsson's hand shot up. "What haven't we seen, ma'am?"

"Nothing. Except the details involving orders given to other elements, you're going in with full intel, so ask."

Lemarchand raised his hand next. "Yes, Jacques?"

Despite his best efforts, he always appeared to be partly unshaved, which actually gave him a rather rude look when combined with his gaunt face. "We aren't going in alone, us and a bunch of hardsuits, are we? What kind of support can we expect?"

"Of course we're not going in alone. Ours is not the only company to deploy. We'll be deploying under the largest fighter screen you've ever seen, but that's no guarantee. The skies will be contested at least during the beginning of the op. Besides, of course, we have the Overwatch crew, but they will operate on a different set of objectives."

"Gloryhogs," Westmoreland groaned. She resembled Shepard in many ways: short, slim and lean. Her hair was auburn instead of black, however, and she wore it cut short.

"Since you're of a competitive mindset, Jane, let me remind you they're on our turf. I hope you don't lose sight of the main objective here, people." She squared herself again. "Look, I don't give a flying fuck whether you care about Omnics or not. Once again, this is _our_ turf, and some shithead of an alien decided to skip pleasantries and introduce himself by shooting the hell out of the place and taking our people prisoner. Big fucking mistake there, mister."

"Fuckin' a, ma'am," Westmoreland retorted with an edge.

"Well, now that you've got your banter, put down the score cards and act like the damn pros you are. That means that after you get out of this room, Astrid, you go to the armory and run a check on the squad-shield and the bubbles you'll be throwing up in a few days' time; Marcia and Yelena, top off your medi-gel tanks and go pay a visit to Anika Ziegler over at the Overwatch barracks to pick up the new Caducei I requisitioned for you; Yuri, you make sure your particle cannon is up to the task and get that barrier engine tested, and yes, I mean you strap on that power armor and get shot at with the biggest gun on this ship; Kimo and Oscar, grab those huge-ass railguns and get ready to punch out some one-way tickets for those bluebloods; Jacques and Jane, you're the geniuses with your hardlight and boom toys so I don't even know what to tell you other than to get your damn gear ready, and those of you who work with Benedict make sure you listen to him damn well, and if you fucking don't, go and get your ears checked out right now. Each of you, you get the message. Get to work. Dismissed."

* * *

Dinner time came and went, but Aaliyah had little appetite and actually had to force the food down. Not that the cooking aboard the London would earn any prizes either, but her mind was… elsewhere. So her visit to the wardroom had been perfunctory, in spite of the attentions and honeyed words of her fellow officers and some of the Overwatch agents present.

Whenever she was deployed planetside and she felt stressed, there were no less than five ways out: go for a workout, get in a ring with someone, pay a visit to the firing range, go to a bar and get smashed, or get laid. She was not planetside, though, so the last two were out of question - and even if she were, the tension about the upcoming deployment did no favors to her mood.

She had already worked out enough for a day, so she grabbed her practice sidearm and went to the firing range—which was nothing other than a repurposed fighter launch tube. In an era of genetically enhanced troopers and weapons with fire control modules networked with heads-up displays and retinal implants, target practice was, in the eyes of those with a transhumanist streak, something going the way of past relics. Some of those very transhumanists were ranking officers and decision makers, but Shepard believed that nothing substituted practice with live rounds. Too many became enamoured with high tech and forgot that keeping it simple got the job done.

"Good evening, ma'am." The range master was a blond, rotund Dutchman, his name Bram Pieterzoon. He reached up a shelf, knowing what was coming next, "What will it be tonight?"

"Rapid fire. Two hundred rounds."

"Two hundred rounds it is, ma'am." A nod, then he handed her two boxes of caseless rounds. He had seen her there often enough to gauge her patterns, so he hazarded a guess, "Blowing off some steam?"

"You can say," she sighed as she walked down to the nearest lane —since it was almost 2300 GMT, everyone else was either on duty or about to hit the racks—, put on the hearing protectors, and waited. The first target popped up. Rapid fire rules granted her one second per target to take aim and fire, which actually was and was not more time than what it seemed.

And Shepard was an expert at it. She raised her pistol with her right hand, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The pistol barked. The target disappeared, then another popped up. Another trigger pull, another bark, and again the target vanished. The sequence repeated itself over twenty times, then it was time to replace the clip.

Pieterzoon gave her the tally so far. The report was unnecessary, as it was displayed on a large scoreboard set on a wall, but the range master had earned the right to his quirks by mentoring many a shooter:

"Point-nine-four."

"Give me a break, Dutch. I'm warming up."

Again she lined up the shot and fired. Twenty-five targets popped up and vanished in quick succession.

"One-point-oh," he reported.

"That's more like it." She gave him a thin half-smirk that quickly vanished. Then she switched her pistol to her prosthetic left hand. Two more clips went down with the same score.

The Dutchman grinned toothily: "So this is the shooting that did Reaper in?"

She rolled her eyes before muttering, "He laughed at them. Didn't even tickle him."

Pieterzoon noted her mood and was going to reply that somehow she had gotten the job done when someone else walked in and he saluted, "Ma'am."

"Ma'am," Shepard echoed him.

"At ease, Dutch," Visconti saluted back. "I thought I'd find you here."

Aaliyah shrugged. "The cantina didn't seem like me tonight, ma'am."

The grizzled officer appraised her with a brown look. "You never were one to go wild while on furlough either."

Shepard turned back to her gun. She loaded a fresh clip, cycled the chamber, and put the safety on. "Too much on my mind to fraternize, ma'am."

"Not the only one with that mood. The cantina is very quiet now."

A shrug, then she pointed at the pistol resting on the stand. "It's loaded, ma'am. Want to give it a try?"

Visconti looked at the tally -point-nine-eight-five out of a hundred shots-, and smiled. "Do I hear a challenge being issued, Pieterzoon?"

"With all due respect, ma'am, I never take sides between ladies. It never ends up well."

She laughed briefly, took the gun into her prosthetic right hand, unloaded the magazine, inserted it again, removed the safe, and waited for the first target to appear. Half a minute later, the range master gave the tally:

"Point-nine-two."

"Not bad for a trial round without warming up," Visconti accepted with half a grin.

Aaliyah was uncomfortable, having recalled the brief talk with Morrison after leaving Reaper's holding cell, and decided she had to get it out of the way, now, but her superior officer beat her to it:

"Shepard, if something bothers you, speak freely. I can be a bitch sometimes but I never tore someone's head off for speaking out loud."

She decided to be blunt about it: "Morrison offered me a job, if we all make it through what's coming up. If."

Visconti needed not studying this promising young officer: "Someone else would be out of herself with joy."

"Ma'am… I didn't earn this. Reaper let me win, he can _turn into a damn ghost and appear anywhere,_ he could have gotten the drop on me six ways from Sunday. He's got a plan." She leaned against a wall. "I've looked at this again and again and again and again. I don't know everything he can do-"

"No one does."

"I know, ma'am, but even so, if I'd been him-" She stopped in her tracks, took a deep breath, and started again: "He killed over ten people simply by turning into smoke and engulfing them, treating armor like it wasn't there. If I'd been him I'd have slaughtered my way through the whole deck if I wanted to. What does he want? I don't get it."

Visconti leaned against the wall too, next to her. "I believe Morrison knows it, too. And knows that you know. He was very smart about it: he's spared you the guilt of abandoning your men, and he's given you the chance to prove to yourself that yes, you deserve it." She turned to look at Shepard. "If you feel you're not ready for Overwatch, then you aren't. But I know you are ready for what's coming, and I don't need to tell you what kind of challenge it is. And that's what's needed of you right now. I don't like having that time bomb ticking aboard either, but if Overwatch can deal with him and they didn't advise us to jettison him into the nearest star, then they also know he has a plan. Whatever that plan is, it doesn't include gutting us."

It was not an entirely satisfying answer, but Shepard found some comfort in the idea that her superior shared her concerns and had examined them as well - apparently as thoroughly as she had done. She returned the look and replied with absolute confidence: "I'm ready for Pokhara, ma'am. I'm ready now."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ Credits to the following people for their **priceless help and their time:**

 _Proofreading:_ Brainsbeforebullets, BrokenLifeCycle

 _Tech research and brainstorming:_ BrokenLifeCycle


	7. Clash in the Sky

Arcturus system, SSV London

It was a sight to behold. The Arcturus 2nd Fleet was probably the largest concentration of firepower mankind had ever put together — except that it was not humanity's struggle alone this time. Fear of a rise of the robots had been present in the collective zeitgeist from the moment robots had been created, and eventually that moment had come, but that uprising had been contained, in part, thanks to the efforts of the very Omnics themselves.

The Systems Alliance was called that way for several reasons. First, it comprised Earth and all of the colonies that had sprung up on the previous decades. Second, it was an alliance. Humans had created Omnics as another episode of their eternal quest to rid themselves of the vagaries of labor and work. However, as it had been the case with slavery, reality had slapped humanity in the face, telling them that there was no escaping it without burdening someone else. Also, they had created life: mechanical, electro-optical, artificial, but still sentient. They had been treated to a rocky start, but Omnics had surpassed their creators in one crucial aspect: they had quickly learned not to hold pointless grudges.

The sheer volume of forces mobilized made it impossible to conceal from the press that that something very serious had happened, but not what. That something would be disclosed today on Earth in minutes, after the fleet had jumped to the Khyar system, where Pokhara was.

"Attention all hands," AIs warned on all ships, "Strike commander John Morrison of Overwatch will be addressing the fleet. Stand by."

The scarred, elderly veteran surveyed the faces arrayed around him. Old and new. Faces he had seen a lot: Genji, Hana, Hanzo, Lena, Torbjörn, Zenyatta. Faces he had not seen so often but that were aching and vivid reminders of people gone: Anika — Angela Ziegler's daughter and near copy; and Layali — Fareeha Amari's daughter. And the future, symbolized by the young lieutenant that had stood her ground before Reaper and survived.

"For as long as humanity has existed, we have fought each other. We have always sought to impose our will on those unlike us, those of different mindsets and ideas and cultures.

"A question we have all asked ourselves since the dawn of time was whether we were alone in the universe. That question has been met with an answer, and that answer is no. Regrettably, we have not met equals in the stars but aggressors instead. Pokhara is now under alien rule, and we have little knowledge of the fates that have befallen our fellow citizens.

"It is a sad thing that, once again, we find in a common enemy a reason to overcome our differences. Let us remember that it took that to unite us, and hope that, when the smoke clears, a newer, stronger alliance will stand, greater than the sum of human and Omnic. For, like on any of the great conflicts of centuries past, we will fight well — and we will prevail. As one."

He paused in silence before concluding his speech just like the soldier he was at heart:

"Morrison out."

Shepard could almost hear the uproar and chaos such revelations were unleashing in other ships of the fleet. Overwatch, here? Aliens? Invaders? She could also imagine officers hollering their troopers into silence or simply staring stonily while they waited for them to shut up.

She wondered how many would remember the stern message instead of the news.

The Overwatch commander gave his crew one last look, then said simply, "Good luck, people. Please don't get yourselves killed down there."

Hana Song looked much younger than her forty-nine years. Having mothered three children had not prevented her from donning her trademark plugsuit. She smirked ferociously and boasted in the manner of the teenager she still was to some point, "They're about to find out just how badly out of their league they are."

"It's always a game for you, isn't it," Hanzo muttered under his breath.

"One I always win," Hana winked at him, then left the bridge to tend to her hardsuit.

Lefevre was too caught up with the tension of the moment to notice the exchanges. A glance to his navigator — a short, pudgy officer with a near-perpetual maniacal glint to his eyes — and a nod. The man sent a few commands to the ship's AI, and a synthetic voice rang all over the ship:

"Battle stations. Translation in six minutes."

Visconti stood behind him. She did not want to put her thoughts into the open: every fiber of her being was screaming _ambush_.

Her commander read her emotions. _I would_ , he replied with a grim look. A ship was at its most vulnerable during the first few seconds after jumping through a trans-stellar accelerator, as an attacker could quickly lock in on the pulse of EM radiation and fire before their target knew where they were. Pirates had preyed on civilian and commercial traffic using that trick ever since interstellar travel had become commonplace — and the military had polished the trick into a tactic for ship-to-ship sniping.

On the other hand, if their enemy was smart, they would be wise not to risk setting up a trap that could potentially turn against them, given how little each side knew about each other. Given the information they had received via Arcturus, the aliens were advanced, but they were not that advanced; their technological edge, if they had it, was one they could offset by sheer numbers. He did not like it — there was a limit to the number of drone fighters and craft their forces could throw at the problem — but if there was a price to pay, it would be paid. No alien was going to take over an Alliance colony by force.

 _We'll see soon enough what we're dealing with…_

"All stations manned and ready," the London's AI reported. Lefevre nodded but said nothing.

"Commander, if you'll excuse me, I'm needed elsewhere," Morrison politely requested. It was largely unnecessary since he had authority to go almost anywhere on the ship, but he still was a guest.

Lefevre nodded in thanks and agreement, and replied, "You're excused, sir."

Most of the Overwatch crew left. Shepard followed suit to tend to her own men. The only one not to follow was the motionless, floating metallic monk. Lefevre was puzzled for a second, but his disposition was so serene and calm that he felt it would be disrespectful to interrupt his meditation…

 _Meditation?_ It was surprisingly easy to forget that Tekhartha Zenyatta was an Omnic. _How can a *machine* meditate?_ He had not had much contact with the Shambali himself except for a brief period during the colonization of Pokhara, and he was old enough to harbor vivid memories of the first Omnic Crisis in all its terrifying majesty.

And still, despite his mistrust of synthetics, he had to admit that his very presence was soothing. His subordinates seemed to breathe easier close to the monk — he certainly managed to lighten the stifling atmosphere by lending some of his calm to those on the bridge. He understood that Zenyatta was there because he decided he was needed there.

In light of the huge bulk of the accelerator on their screens as they approached it to make the jump, that idea was probably right.

"Interrogation signal received," an operator informed.

"Clearance check is green. Tunnel is opening now," another echoed.

"Accelerator has acquired us. Translation in fifteen seconds."

"Gunnery and engineering, stand ready to answer calls," Lefevre instructed.

"Yes sir."

The AI warned, "Brace for acceleration… translation in three… two… one…"

* * *

"Translation complete. Systems check green across the board," London reported.

"No contacts in the vicinity, sir," a ladar operator reported.

"What do we have on the long range sensors?"

This far, Pokhara was barely a greenish dot in the starry void, but the long-range scanners depicted the planet as a largely earthlike world, about one third bigger in volume than Earth, with cloud-covered turquoise skies. Its space was quite crowded: five small moons, a set of large rings, and asteroid thickets surrounded it.

Lefevre had attended the admiralty meetings and knew all about this. If the enemy was determined and had the resources to defend its hold on the planet it would be a challenge. Simply racing ahead and trying to slip through the asteroids meant to risk getting sniped by hiding ambushers. They could counter that by launching their fighters, but getting the two carriers close enough hazarded exposing them to long range fire. "Fall into formation port of the Nile," he commanded, naming the lead carrier and acting flagship for the operation.

"Alert, unknown contacts detected," the AI informed, and the main hologram projector in the center of the combat information center changed on the spot to depict a scheme of the neighboring space between the planet and the relay. Two vessels of cruiser displacement and over a dozen escorts were visible holding station next to one of the moons in Pokhara's orbit.

"They got reinforced," an aide observed unnecessarily.

The navigator frowned and noted, "It stands to reason. They find a colony by an unknown civilization, of course they'll want backup."

"We're going to crash their party regardless, Wilkinson," Lefevre mused.

"Hang a big roger on that one, sir."

"Commander, we have just been detected," London informed.

"How?"

"Low-energy laser designators. Signal source is evaluated to be within close range."

"Some sort of surveillance device?" Wilkinson pondered.

"Something mounted on the accelerator itself, I'd bet."

The gunnery officer and resident XO after Jamison's dismissal, one serious-looking blonde by the name of Bridgette Lechner, was unsettled by the news and moved immediately to deal with the problem:

"Get me the CAG. I want a fighter sweep of the area. Find any enemy listening posts or tracking devices and disable them."

"Yes ma'am," an aide replied on the spot.

"The scouts reported nothing of this," Visconti noted with some disquiet.

Lefevre nodded and commented, "The other side is playing it smart. They saw them, recognised them for what they were, and placed additional surveillance while they called for help." He did not state the obvious: they know we're here.

Only training stopped him from going pale when all lights turned red and alarm klaxons started blaring:

"INCOMING ORDNANCE! BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

"RAISE BARRIERS!" the captain bellowed on reflex. He hoped it was not too late—

The London was violently jolted by the impact. Some of the operators on the bridge were thrown from their seats, but Lefevre managed to keep his footing — albeit with Zenyatta's help, who had held out an outstretched hand to him.

"Thanks," he uttered huskily, then demanded, "Damage report!"

"Shields are down to ninety-two percent. Particle barriers dissipated most of the energy of the impact. Minor damage to upper starboard armor," London's AI reported.

"Some guns they have," Lechner noted with worry. No Alliance-built starship-mounted cannon could pierce a ship-scaled particle barrier, not even for scratch damage, but the alien weaponry had just done so. Worse still, that powerful defense was short-lived, and they could only count on it for critical instances; the capacitors took two entire minutes to recharge, which in combat parlance was an eternity. When the heaviest guns humans had could sustain a continuous rate of fire of three shots per minute, to rely on particle barriers alone was suicidal, and the armor they had available could withstand that only so much. However miraculous the materials technology of the 22nd century was, it still had to produce alloys that were both workable and impervious to that kind of damage.

"Status on the rest of the fleet?"

"Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Nile and Amazon also took hits, but apparently we got the worst one, commander," an aide answered on the spot.

"New contacts detected," the AI alerted. He noted the position on the hologram projector: the ambushers were roughly equivalent in composition and amount to the force orbiting Pokhara.

"They tried to get the jump on us after all," Visconti noted.

"And it would have worked on weaker ships," he grunted, then looked intently at the map for a few instants and gave his orders: "Set new course two-two-five, angels zero, one third ahead."

Wilkinson nodded, concerned but unable to find fault in his CO's judgment. The heading was calculated from an imaginary axis running through both the accelerator and the Khyar star, while 'angels zero' meant they were to keep their position on the Y-axis neutral relative to the star. The course set put them right between the assailants and the Nile.

"Aye aye, sir. Two-two-five, one third ahead," the navigator repeated.

The ladar operator reported, "Change of aspect on enemy force... enemy cruisers falling to new heading… estimated course is three-one-five, angels minus ten-point-seven."

"They're running away," Lechner realised.

"They believe they can't punch through with what they've got." Well, one must never correct the enemy when they're making a mistake… "Contact admiral Ferriera on the Nile and request permission to pursue."

"Amazon and Nile are launching strike craft, sir," Wilkinson warned.

Involuntarily, Lefevre turned around to look at the swarm of dots on the hologram projector. He had witnessed it directly before. It was a spectacle both incredible and terrifying to behold, because since the advent of mass effect technology, much of the space combat doctrine of mankind had revolved around unleashing and countering swarms of hundreds, sometimes over a thousand drone fighters and bombers piloted by Omnic-derived Lesser Artificial Intelligences and armed both with standard weapons and electronic warfare suites. It was the legacy of the United States Navy, mankind's foremost naval power for much of the 20th and 21st centuries, as it had been their signature power projection strategy — albeit in a much smaller scale.

 _Will they have a counter for this?_

A reply came from the Nile: "Permission is granted, sir, but we're not to take our chances. Admiral's own words."

"We don't want to endanger our guests, I suppose," he commented as he took another glance at the impossibly calm Zenyatta, who floated in the lotus flower position thoroughly unfazed by the situation.

Noting that part of the task force had also been sent in pursuit, he then added, "Wilkinson, fall into formation behind the Buenos Aires. Stand ready to support our strike craft."

"Aye aye, sir."

The escaping aliens also were launching their own strike craft, but they were so grotesquely outnumbered that Lefevre pondered what they were hoping to achieve. They quickly closed in with the pursuing swarm of drone fighters, and the fight was joined. It was a valiant effort, but a hopeless one. Most of the AI-controlled strike craft simply hurtled past them and went after their larger prey. If anything, the alien pilots had skill, and their craft were agile and well armed, but the combined use of hardlight shields and particle barriers by the Alliance negated their superior weaponry advantage. Still, hits were scored, kills even, before they were overwhelmed and disabled.

It felt ugly to watch. Enemies or not, they were gallant and brave.

"They shall not come to harm, commander," Zenyatta spoke for the first time.

Lefevre was surprised, but then he turned his attention back to the hologram. Now the cluster of strike craft was getting within range of the aliens' point defenses. Once again, while the batteries of laser turrets were efficient, there simply were not enough of them. The guns quickly went silent as the drones' EW suites did their work.

Then he saw the escorts take a hard turn. The ladar operator informed with some perplexity on her voice, "Sir, the enemy force is radically changing course… coming down to heading one-three-zero, angels zero…"

"Get me a firing solution on the nearest cruiser!"

"We have it, sir. They're heading right at us, it's impossible to miss," Lechner replied, missing the point.

"That's exactly what they want. They won't miss us," Lefevre retorted with an edge before he ordered, "Fire the main gun!"

The main gun, in this case, was a railgun as long as the ship was — some 400-odd meters long, in fact — rated at the equivalent of twenty kilotons of TNT per round. Such guns had been clunky and maintenance intensive in ages past, but mass effect technology had turned them into straightforward mechanisms. They were, in essence, devices that hurled weights at blindingly fast velocity. Simple, but no less deadly because of that.

A muted _thump_ was heard and a slight tremor shook the London, and a ten-kilo slug of tungsten-coated iron streaked towards the incoming ship. The kinetic energy of the impact vaporized the round in a blast of incandescent plasma.

Lechner reported, some frustration in her voice, "Target is still in movement."

"Sustained fire!" was Lefevre's immediate command.

The situation had been noticed by their sister ships because the other four vessels in their squadron were now firing with abandon. The other alien cruiser took multiple direct hits on its bow and literally disintegrated in a catastrophic detonation that left nothing of it but a cloud of debris. One of the escorts also erupted into an explosion under the sustained attack of the cloud of strike craft around it, but the alien vessels were very fast.

"Target is damaged but still moving, sir, and approaching point-blank range!"

"Keep firing!"

A fifth _thump_ sent another ten-kilo slug towards the hurt but defiant incoming ship, piercing right through the frontal bow shield and armor plating and punching all the way through, leaving a gaping hole all along the half-kilometer long vessel in the process.

"No detonation, but the engines have died," an aide informed. A quick glance and she had a brief instant to be amazed: the ship was still in one piece, but for all purposes gutted.

"It's still coming in wicked fast," Wilkinson exclaimed, then ordered, "All ahead flank port! Initiate evasion drill!"

"Proximity alarm!"

Lefevre's blood chilled and he paled under the red lights. He briefly and grudgingly admired the courage and bravery of the enemy: they had sacrificed their cruisers on purpose to allow the escorts, much nimbler and slighter, to close in. They were hopelessly close now, surrounded by a swarm of green dots on the hologram projector, but still coming:

"Ring the collision alarm! London, you have the barriers!"

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

As part of a squadron, there was a drill against ramming: each ship would take on a heading prearranged beforehand, and accelerate to maximum possible speed to scatter away and deny targets to the enemy. As it was right now, it was futile; the alien ships were barely functional now, most of their systems disabled either by electronic warfare or direct fire but not all as their crew could still fly them to their targets — which they did — and furthermore, that procedure did not account for an enemy an order of magnitude faster. The London's AI raised her recharged barriers just before the collision, which probably saved the ship but was not enough to stop the impact outright. The alien vessel smashed against the London on its starboard side, its blunt arrowhead-shaped prow smashing its way past layers and layers of armor and venting two whole decks into space. With the exception of the Ekaterinburg, all of the London's sister ships were similarly hit.

* * *

The impact felt like an earthquake. It rocked Shepard's troopers on their seats within their dropship, but everything — including themselves — was tightly secured.

"Is everyone alright?" Marcia Salazar asked, as one of the two platoon medics. A chorus of yeses answered her.

"Everyone out, on the double," Shepard ordered as she unbuckled the safety belts keeping her on her seat. Then she reached for her battle rifle in the rack over her head, and interrogated the AI via her omni-tool, "London, report."

"We have collided with a hostile vessel. The hull has been breached mid to forwards on decks 1 and 2, starboard side," was the clinically-voiced reply. The AI then displayed a small hologram depicting the status of the ship: huge sections of the upper two decks were flashing red.

She grimaced, then asked, "What is your condition?"

"Hull integrity is at seventy-two percent. Atmospheric containment measures have been enacted. Main armament is damaged and inoperable."

The ship can still be saved. She grimly nodded and continued, "You have sent a distress call to the rest of the fleet along with your status report, I assume. Casualties?"

A male synthetic voice spoke then, "Lieutenant, your superiors here in the bridge require help. I am assisting them but their needs exceed my skills."

"Who is this? Identify yourself." The voice was familiar.

"This is Zenyatta speaking, ma'am."

There was a moment of reverent silence upon the mention of the name, but Shepard shifted on the spot from surprised trooper to officer in charge and ordered, "Unpack your gear. We have been rammed by a hostile ship, so assume we've been boarded. Get ready to repel hostiles."

"Yes ma'am." Harriot triggered the manual release mechanism and the door slid open.

"Thanks for the warning, sir. Help is on the way. Shepard out." She cut the link, ran a brief check on her battle rifle, glanced at the door and pointed at two of her troopers, "Aliyev and Martinsson, you're up."

The blond shieldmaiden and the Russian were all business now. She went out first, and immediately deployed her squad-shield as she did; Aliyev was next, particle cannon primed and ready, and stood back to back with her. They performed a complete rotation in full sight of Shepard's and Wenner's troops, senses fully alert, eyes darting everywhere.

Eventually they nodded and gave the all-clear signal with their fists. "No hostiles in sight."

The rest of Aaliyah's men left the dropship. Red alert lights spun and alarm sirens rang everywhere. Kimo Lemetti and Oscar Moronta, the sharpshooters, at once looked uncomfortably at the catwalks overlooking the hangar then glanced at their superior. Shepard nodded and gestured at them to remain alert, then trotted over to her colleague in charge of the 2nd platoon.

"Albrecht," she greeted him, "you up to speed?"

"Mostly. We have a casualty. One of my snipers has a concussion."

"Then leave her. We're moving out. We have to secure decks one and two."

Wenner nodded. They were of equal rank, but in the absence of a direct superior, as leader of 1st platoon Shepard was acting company commander.

"Alright, I'm leaving her with the fighter bunch."

"Do it."

A few omni-tool taps confirmed what she feared: both the CO and her own superior were incapacitated. She went down the chain of command and queried an officer, "Sir, this is lieutenant Aaliyah Shepard. Commander Lefevre and LC Visconti are down. I am taking command of my company and mobilizing to isolate the breached area in case hostiles have boarded our ship, unless you have different orders."

On the other end of the link, lieutenant commander Alexander Kol frowned, then nodded. As the officer in charge of the London's fighter complement, marine duties were far from his province, but he was next in the chain of command, and Shepard was only doing what was expected of her.

"You have my authorization, lieutenant. I don't need to tell you to coordinate your efforts with the Overwatch squads."

"My next call is for their commander, sir, in fact."

"Good. Stay on your toes, Shepard. London reports she's holding together and she's moving out of harm's way but if something unexpected crops up we're dead in the water so I may order to abandon the ship."

She bit her lip and held her words for a second. Awful as it sounded, it made sense — if enemy reinforcements arrived then the London was an irresistible target.

"Understood, sir. We'll make haste. Out."

She was going to talk to Morrison next, but London's AI interrupted urgently, "Alert. Breaching attempts detected on containment doors on decks one and two."

She swore and spurred her troops with a rousing order: "The enemy is in the ship! Move!" The score of troopers needed no further encouragement and they ran towards the exit hallway, weapons at the ready.

"London, what measures can you deploy around the doors?" Aaliyah asked next.

"LAI drones and stationary defenses are online."

She talked to her omni-tool as she ran, "Morrison, are you seeing this?"

"We're on the move," the husky voice replied, then added, "we're going to try and secure deck one. How many men do you have with you?"

"Four fire teams. There's also Minovsky's squad… moving on his own towards deck two," she informed as she quickly scanned the ship schematics, then continued, "Elements from Company One are also closing in and will get there before us, they got some Omnics with them. That's about sixty men in total."

"Let's hope it's enough," came the reply. "Contact me if you have to."

"Roger. Out."

She routed the feed from her omni-tool to her heads-up display to follow the aliens' progress. In four different places, they had almost breached through the containment doors that sealed the bulkhead tight in case of hull breach. The London AI was setting up a slew of obstacles to slow the boarders down, but not for a second did she believe it would stop them. A gut feeling moved her to order her troopers, "Zero-g check, everyone."

Yelena Danesti handled that for her and reported, "Everyone is green, ma'am. We only got emergency oxygen to last each of us for up to one hour, though."

"It'd better be enough."

After some two agonising seconds, she decided to go for the farthest breach: it would take the longest to get there, but there were some maintenance stairwells nearby and if the enemy could get to those they would have access to all sorts of critical areas in the ship, not the least of which was a corridor to the main reactor plant. She only hoped she was making the right call and the rest of the squads could hold them off.

* * *

The mess hall of the ship was, effectively, a mess of turned-over tables and armed enlisted crew, a chaos only compounded further by the alarm claxons and red alert lights spinning everywhere. Some of the men there saw Viktor Minovsky and his team coming in and almost jumped in surprise. Marcus Seltzer recognized him and rushed to report: "Vic!"

"Marcus. How many do you have here?"

"Forty lads. We emptied the armory. About as best as we could do."

The leader of the 3rd platoon did not like what he saw. They were well armed, but almost none of those enlisted men wore much armor other than some shield belts, and if the aliens' small arms were anything like the main guns on their starships they may as well be wearing wet tissue paper. "Alright, we'll get the main exit. You have the enlisted crew take positions around the hall for good fields of fire. You know the drill."

"Aye, ell-tee," Marcus turned on his heel and hollered on the spot, "You heard the lieutenant! Stay covered and don't try to play any heroics today! Just support him and his squad, y'hear?"

Minovsky's squad also got to work. Gonzaga and Collor, his snipers, took position by the passageway they had entered the mess hall by. Abbott and Warren, his engineers, started to set small hardlight sentry turrets on nooks and ceilings by the bulkhead door. Dietrich was his shieldbearer so he had nothing to do right now other than waiting a stoic, sweaty and terse wait. Kandasamy and Tanaka were close-quarters specialists, armed with a combination of submachineguns and concussion grenades, so they waited as well next to Dietrich, equally stoic, equally tense. The two Omnics in their team were, uniquely, medics both: much like humans tended to take after their idols and leader figures, Ororo and Seraph took after Zenyatta.

There was a shower of sparks on the huge blast door on the other end of the hall that told Abbott and Warren to withdraw: "Here they come!"

"Stay on cover! Dietrich, on point!"

The large blast door opened sideways, to reveal the twisted and smoking remains of some ten-odd LAI defense droids in the penumbra, and no sight of the enemy—

—then there was the thunder of a high-powered shot, followed by the tinkling of shattering glass, and Collor's head became a trypophobic nightmare before turning into red mist—

—then there was a fusillade of blue tracers as the aliens opened fire, and a blast of coruscating electricity that enveloped Ororo and Seraph. The Omnics could not be 'killed' by means of circuit overload, but it was enough to knock them out of the fight, albeit temporarily. The enlisted crew and Minovsky's squad returned fire and the corridor became a kill zone.

Dietrich jumped out of cover, however, and deployed his squad-shield. The deflector surprisingly held under the hail of fire, an opportunity Abbott used to prime a concussion charge and toss it to the other side of the blast door—

—but some unseen force held it suspended in midair and the hail of fire ceased until the charge went off harmlessly. "What the—"

Another high-powered shot boomed. A warning signal appeared on Dietrich's HUD, and he reached for a deployable bubble shield—

A silhouette flashed with blue fire on the other side of the door. Gonzaga zeroed in on it and pulled the trigger — but his shot hit nothing but thin air as the silhouette shot forward blindingly fast and crashed upon Dietrich. The shieldbearer was blown away by the impact, then the alien frontliner jumped into the air and smashed his fist on the ground. Kandasamy, Tanaka and ten other troopers were knocked prone by a powerful shockwave that left everyone's ears ringing. A hail of withering fire scythed through them.

"Shite!" Seltzer quickly jumped back to his feet and, ignoring the deadly blue tracers, reached for the stunned Dietrich's belt, grabbed a bubble shield and deployed it on the spot. Momentarily covered, he pushed his back against a wall and shouted desperately on his omni-tool: "To everyone in this network, this is chief supply officer Seltzer! The boarders are pushing us hard, half of Minovsky's squad is down! We need all the help we can get and we need it now now now!"

There were screams and shouts in a language he did not understand when the sentry turrets deployed by Abbott and Warren acquired and fired, riddling one, then another of the aliens with holes before they were destroyed. The engineers noticed the weakness and pressed their attack, causing the raiders to get to cover as they flooded the hallway with hardlight fire. That bought Minovsky some precious seconds to reorganize what was left of his squad: noticing that Ororo and Seraph were still knocked out and in the open, he helped Dietrich back to his feet and together they pushed towards the enemy—

—then he was violently pulled backwards, and wildly spun around some black orb of coruscating darkness. A tiny part of his terrified mind remembered that some heavies used to perform similar feats with their weapons, and there was some trick to escape their pull using their shields, but the same force was pulling from his limbs as if a horse was tied to them. By corner of his eye he glimpsed an armored figure among the aliens, standing much like a human — as opposed to the aliens that seemed to walk on their toes —; his eyes bulged inside his helmet as the figure went ablaze with blue fire, and it made a gesture with its hand that sent some spherical attack rippling towards him—

The explosion sent him flying with incredible violence, but Minovsky was already unconscious before he was slammed against the wall past the serving counter.

* * *

"Shepard, this is Kol. We just lost Minovsky."

Aaliyah did not need to bring up the ship schematics to know who had been there. Her team and Wenner's were laying traps and countermeasures on the passageway next to the still sealed blast door, but the enemy would not take long now. She swore to herself and acknowledged the message, "I understand, sir."

"I'm sending some heavies to plug that hole. Also there is some backup going your way, an Overwatch squad. They'll be there any second now."

"Thank you, sir."

"Good luck, Shepard. Kol out."

She took a deep breath and signaled Wenner, but before she could say anything, she caught some movement on the stairs about thirty meters behind them, and she smiled. She could recognise Tracer's gait anywhere. "Great to have you, Lena."

The girl smirked back and replied with some hard-edged sarcasm, "Well, keepin' all the fun for ourselves isn't very generous, wouldn't you say?"

"Not my idea of fun, that's for sure."

Shepard's eyes jumped to the rest of the squad: Genji Shimada, his brother Hanzo, Mercy's daughter Anika, the bulky Zaryanova, and a sniper bearing a strange canister rifle she had never seen before. Then she saw a huge bulk turn around a corner a few meters ahead, and a hardsuit approached with powerful steps.

The pilot raised a gun-hand and spoke in greeting, "Hello, lieutenant!" It was Hana Song, better known by her _nom de guerre_ , D-Va. "Jack had us come down here after your CO told us what happened to your fellow squad. Let's show these newcomers how the game is played, then we'll go fix that, what do you say?"

The Overwatch commander had sent the best of the best her way. Aaliyah literally felt the explosion of confidence that suddenly poured from her troopers, but she did not give in to the euphoria. Minovsky had also been a trained and capable officer as every bit as skilled as she was, and still the enemy had steamrolled over him. "I'm not opposed to that, ma'am."

"With all due respect, we don't need no such delight," the sniper said dryly with a thick British accent. "Morrison stated you are in charge here, ma'am. Orders?"

There was a shower of sparks on the blast door behind them then, which prompted a scowl before she replied, "We had planned for an ambush, but there's no time to rearrange things to account for you, so we'll have to roll with it."

"Acknowledged," he nodded curtly, then turned on his heel and quickly sped away to take cover some fifty meters from the breach. D-Va and Zaryanova stood where they were right in the middle of the passageway, and Martinsson joined them there, shield at the ready, suddenly wishing she had Reinhardt's hammer instead of the standard issue submachinegun. Still, she felt stupidly, absurdly confident, and cautioned herself against it.

The door opened sideways. This time they got a clear look at their enemy: seven of them walked on their toes, while a single one seemed to be similar in overall shape to… a human female.

Again the enemy opened with a fusillade, but D-Va lived up to her reputation as she deployed her point defense and not one round went past it. Zarya seized the opportunity and quickly squeezed off a barrage of plasma blasts that sent the aliens scurrying for cover, but not before they had left a corpse behind. Lemarchand and Westmoreland added their own hardlight blasts to the rain of suppressive fire.

Then, where nothing had been before, two more of the assailants appeared, brandishing powerful long rifles, and as one they targeted Westmoreland. Martinsson's shield blocked the shots, but collapsed soon thereafter, and immediately one of the aliens broke cover and raced for their positions, ignoring the withering hail of fire that pelted it—

—but then it stumbled, fell to its knees, and hit the ground hard face-first, its helmet pierced from side to side by a powerful arrow. They caught a glimpse of the rest of the aliens quickly diving for cover again, which prompted Astrid to throw up a bubble shield around them—

—and just in time, because the bomb the alien was carrying went off with a deafening explosion, showering the corridor with blue ichors everywhere. The shield was shattered by the blast, and raised her point defense almost immediately afterwards—

—but by then Astrid had already been hit by a burst of gunfire and gone down without a noise. There was a whistling sound, and then a large dart appeared on her right thigh. Another whistle, and the corridor filled with a thick mist.

The mist did not stop them from seeing a blue fire blazing on the other side of the door. Out of reflex Zarya triggered her barrier — almost immediately before one of the assailants smashed against her on a blindingly fast charge. At once all her dynamos lit up.

She almost felt her attacker's amazement at her resilience and smirked.

 _"Spasiba, droog."_

A plasma torch flashed, and her attacker fell with a scream, its legs sliced at the thighs.

At that point D-Va opened up with her chainguns, laying down a deadly stream of suppressive fire that forced the enemy to keep their heads down. Shepard used this opportunity to move her troopers forward and take care of Astrid: "Salazar, get her out of here!" Mercy moved in to assist the medic, while Aliyev took position next to Zarya and nudged her to go behind and wait for her barrier capacitor to recharge. Richardson, shieldbearer on Wenner's platoon, stood ready next to him, shield deployed.

A pulse of lightning and a shower of sparks enveloped D-Va's hardsuit. The guns twitched and went silent, and the enemy made the best out of it: the remaining troopers opened up with a fusillade and sniper fire, which quickly overwhelmed Richardson's shield and forced him to throw up a bubble, but he shouted a warning: it would not last long—

There was a burst of light, and an orb of pulsing and twisting darkness materialized out of nowhere, trapping Shepard, Richardson and Aliyev on its pull. Completely helpless, she could not do anything but staring at the single feminine-looking trooper that readied another attack, alight in blue fire—

Tracer appeared out of thin air right next to the assailant, squeezed off twin barrages with her machine pistols, and popped away the moment there was a flash of turquoise and silver and a black-and-blue silhouette darted right past the ablaze trooper. The alien dropped its outstretched right hand, held its bleeding right flank, and slumped forward. Quickly, its fellows turned around to look for the enemies in their midst, but the ninja was diabolically quick and the girl literally moved faster than the eye could follow her — and Shepard, now free again, seized the distraction to put two bursts straight through two enemy heads. Aliyev further rained explosive plasma blasts on the enemy position, and as the volume of fire died down, he charged forward with a rousing battle cry. Enemy guns peppered his barrier, only adding to the strength of his charge. A wild swing of his plasma torch saw two more enemies horrifically cut apart.

The remaining two aliens had their hands clutched tight on the same disc-shaped explosive devices the suicide bomber had detonated. One of them, Shepard could see, was pressing what could only be a primer again and again, apparently to no effect.

She fired a single warning shot, then pointed her gun at the enemy and demanded, "Surrender, and you won't be harmed," not caring whether she would be understood or not, not caring either whether it was the first time a human was addressing that species outside combat. She trusted her low, quiet and reasonable tone would be clear enough a message.

It did. The aliens dropped their weapons. One of them spoke something that, of course, she did not catch, but she was surprised that she could make something out of its voice — it had a strange echo to it, as if they were two voices speaking almost in perfect unison instead of one. She also could catch its emotional content: the voice was dour, resigned, but determined.

"Collect the weapons and keep your eyes on the prisoners," she hastily ordered and turned on her heel. "D-Va?"

"It's alright," she stated. "Nothing I can't solve by rerouting power."

A nod, then she went behind her hardsuit to deal with her real concern. Yelena and Marcia had stripped Astrid from her armor and were treating her. Her abdomen was an ugly mess of many puncture wounds. The medics had already applied medi-gel to the area and were now treating it with the radiation/nanomachine mixture produced by the Caducei. Shepard was not worried, though. Medi-gel could make troopers come back from wounds far worse than that, and the looks on the faces of her corpsmen seemed to confirm that impression.

"London," she commanded, "report."

The AI brought up a schematic of the ship. She quickly assessed what she saw: Morrison, along with the bulk of the Overwatch squads, had quickly contained the threat on deck one, and then had deployed part of his troop to assist the beleaguered marines in the mess hall on deck two. The hardsuits had thrown back the attackers that had disposed of Minovsky's team and now the whole place was a veritable battleground.

Then her eye was drawn to a cluster of red and green symbols… on deck 7…

"Shit! Everyone, grab your gear and let's go! The enemy is close to both engineering and Reaper's cell on deck seven, they go any further and we lose the ship!"

"I'll have to take a detour to get there," D-Va warned.

"Then take the prisoners and the wounded instead and escort them to the hangar on deck eight with Salazar. Harriot, you and your squad go with them. The rest of you, on me!"

But before they set off, the whole ship shook and rumbled. The London AI reported bleakly, "The San Francisco is lost. The reactor plant went critical and detonated."

The alien prisoner that had spoken before repeated the same words on the same grim tone. It clearly meant something in the lines of how pointless resistance was.

The Overwatch veterans and the Alliance troops looked at each other. "Shepard," Tracer said forcefully, "we're with you."

* * *

It took an awfully long time to get to the cargo holds where the fighting raged, and Shepard despaired as she saw the icons vanishing on the map. When they finally got there, they were treated to the grisly spectacle of corpses strewn everywhere. The resourcefulness of the enemy was visible on the causes of death: concussion, gunshot, electrocution, burning… a few had even been reduced to ice chunks.

" _Mein Gott…_ " Anika was tempted to check on the first body they came across, but grimly held herself in check. They had to save the ship to have chance to save some of these people.

"No time," Shepard uttered quickly, unaware of Mercy's internal struggle. They needed to be urged no further: the sounds of the battle were drawing closer with each step. "To anyone on this network, this is lieutenant Shepard from the Pokhara Expeditionary Force. I'm coming in with friendlies."

"Thank God! This is midshipman 1st class Falcone, we're pinned down by heavy enemy fire by cargo hold 6! We need help here fast!"

"Hold a little longer, Falcone, help is on the way!" She turned around the corner and was again on the same passageway where she had went looking for Aliyev, Lemarchand and Salazar. "Richardson, shield up!"

Fearlessly the shieldbearer jumped forward. Stray blue tracers filled the air. There was no real concentration yet, but the long passageway was strikingly similar to a shooting gallery — only thing was, there were targets and guns on both sides.

Suddenly a pulsing black orb appeared out of nowhere near the beleaguered crew. Three of them were caught in its pull, but the defenders had already paid in blood for some lessons about this: instead of hiding behind cover, those outside the pull of the singularity all opened up at once in a torrent of gunfire, clearly trying to disrupt or kill whoever was responsible for it. It was marginally successful, for still an enemy sniper had enough of a window to take aim at and shoot one of the helpless defenders, but two managed to survive and retreat: "Pull back! Pull back!"

"Shit, they're being torn to pieces here," Shepard muttered. "Yuri, Zaryanova, you're up!"

" _Da, tovarich,_ " the veteran Overwatch agent acknowledged.

"Jacques, Jane, give me some targets," was her next order, uttered through gritted teeth. "Kimo and Oscar, we need you to work your magic here."

"We won't disappoint, ma'am." Lemetti went prone and powered up his huge railgun. Now fire was starting to pour on Richardson's barrier, but that gave him a perfect opening:

"Enemy sniper painted," Moronta reported to his fellow shooter. The target was next to invisible, clearly concealed by some sort of thermo-optical cloaking device, but not invisible enough, as it was outlined on Lemetti's heads-up display.

"On target." The Finn pulled the trigger. There was a sonic boom that would have deafened everyone had they been without helmets, and the railgun slug literally laughed at the shields and armor of the target as it splattered its entrails behind it.

But the thick vapor trail told everyone that there were new players in the game, and the opposition quickly reacted to the threat. Something flashed blue behind cover, and then a cascade of detonations snaked their way up the hall. Richardson braced himself, but the attack simply ignored his shield and the concussions wreaked chaos among the troops, causing little damage but knocking almost everyone prone. Aliyev and Zaryanova snap-triggered their barriers and resisted the attack, but their defense was short-lasting and soon they had to retreat behind cover—

—and then another black singularity appeared, catching almost everyone on its pull. Tracer darted forward, aware of the danger and trying to stop the caster, but the enemy saw her coming and a barrage of suppressive fire deterred her, forcing her to jump from cover to cover. Still, her distraction had the intended effect, as whoever was responsible for the blackhole-like trap — another of those feminine-looking aliens — targeted her with a direct shockwave attack instead of seizing the chance to finish the bulk of the defenders. She dodged it easily, but finding a chink in that armor was an entirely different business and impossible for her to do alone.

But she was not alone. Aliyev and Zarya, released from the trap, at once started pelting the raiders with explosive plasma, while Richardson advanced with shields up. Moronta's railgun boomed and one of the alien's riflemen was blown to pieces. Shepard caught a flash of silver by the corner of her eye, and suddenly all the members of the enemy force — some twenty-odd of them — appeared outlined in red on her HUD, whether visible or behind cover; at once she recognised this as Hanzo's doing and slaved her battle rifle to the output of his sensor arrow, which allowed her to literally pull the trigger with abandon and let the bullets fly on their own to their targets.

The enemy intuited something was wrong when the incoming fire became orders of magnitude more accurate, but for all their tactical acumen and skill they could not cope with the challenge. Shepard's heart swelled when the outlines started shifting from red to gray on her HUD, one by one, and saw that there were only six of them left, all tightly behind cover. "Push forward!"

A single attacker dashed out of cover and turned ablaze with blue fire. At once Aliyev and Zarya readied themselves, knowing what was coming, and were not disappointed when the alien turned into a living cannonball and crashed upon them — to no effect, since the energy of the impact was absorbed by their particle barriers. Two plasma torches carved its legs away—

—but not the hands holding the bunch of explosive discs, Shepard noticed an instant too late.

The detonation sent both Russians flying, blew Richardson away smashing through his shield in the process, and those who were not left unconscious got their breaths knocked out of them. Shepard struggled weakly back to her feet, the tinkling of shattered glass reaching her distantly, as if it was all far, far away…

…glass… was there any glass anywhere in the cargo hold…?

Suddenly her thought processes stopped cold and she went paler than a ghost. Instantly she was wide awake again, aware of the mortal danger that now stalked them, but the assailants saw only her still standing and opened up on her. She pressed her back against cover, looking helplessly at the wrecked window in the observation room next to the makeshift holding cell in cargo hold 5, feeling colder as seconds went by, suddenly shouting silently in mindless rage at the aliens for their stupidity and ignorance, knowing she was going to die in there and her partners in the grave would be some reckless idiots unaware of the hazard they had unleashed.

He was coming.

And on he came, as a cloud of inky, thick dark smoke, almost liquid-like. She closed her glazed eyes as he heard footsteps in the corridor — and waited, stunned and resigned, as Reaper came to her…

The utter cold was now all over her. She felt her lungs shrivel and sting…

And then the air warmed up again.

She opened her eyes just in time to see the leather-clad assassin step right in front of her.

A deep, hoarse laughter filled her ears. _Isn't this ironic_ , she heard.

The assassin walked away from her and stepped onto the corridor slowly. The attackers at once unleashed a barrage of gunfire on him, but Shepard did not look. She did not need to do it to know what would happen next. What happened next, as he turned into a cloud again and engulfed his attackers like an evil spirit, and the passageways filled with shrill, ear-stinging screams.

Seconds later it was over. An undefinable but still repugnant stench clogged her nostrils, defeating the filters built into her helmet even. She heard again footsteps on the corridor, this time walking towards her. She tried to stand again, to move away.

The boots once again stopped before her.

"LEAVE HER ALONE!" A young feminine voice challenged.

Tracer's.

"You heard her." This time it was Zarya. The noises of a particle cannon powering up reached Shepard.

Then she heard the raspy noise of leather against leather. And Reaper's voice. It was different this time. Not as cold, but angrier. "You _ingrates_. I just saved your sorry asses and all you have to offer for it is more threats. Fuck you."

Aaliyah did not dare to raise her eyes. She only could feel the tension between the Overwatch crew and their… was it their nemesis?

"He's right," a male voice spoke gravely. Hanzo's. "We owe him."

She saw the boots turn to face her again.

"Stand up."

The memory of her dead soldiers came to haunt her then, and that gave her the determination needed to slowly stand to her feet on her own and stare into the terrifying mask.

Never in her entire life had she been possessed by anything like the cold, raging hatred that flooded her soul now.

"Yeah, I owe you. And you owe me. Nine times over, you murderer."

The assassin passed her by and started walking away. "You can keep hating me later. There's killing to do."

* * *

 _Author's note: **BrokenLifeCycle**_ contributed priceless effort by doing lots of brainstorming, correcting, and reviewing. Kudos to him.


	8. Regroup

Khyar system

Anika Ziegler walked into the cell alone, wearing a specially reinforced version of the venerable Valkyrie response suit her mother had designed. Instead of wings, this one featured powerful shield projecting arrays, capable of generating barriers based both on hardlight and mass effect fields.

The blue-skinned alien woman hovered a few inches over the floor in a lotus flower position, back turned towards her. It was more of a self-suggestion than anything, but still she could perceive the powerful aura of concentration and discipline that emanated from her.

The alien spoke some words on her own language. The AI installed on her suit translated in her mother's voice, "Such defenses are not necessary."

Again Mercy was impressed by her serenity. "Hello, Valena. I hope I got it right this time."

The alien listened to the synthetic voice and nodded, "You did."

Still, the woman did not move. Mercy walked cautiously around her, and was once again greeted by the spectacle of her eyes filled with white light and her hands cupped around a miniature, blazing blue star. And once again she was reminded of Zenyatta.

"Take it as you may… I really hate to interrupt you, but I have to check you up."

The glowing orb between her hands dimmed and vanished. The light in her eyes also went away, and the woman's legs rested on the floor. She lifted her gaze to meet Anika's, and like the first time, Mercy was rocked — it was so _humanlike._ The dignity and calm and self-assurance on it spoke of a degree of self-mastery she had seen on her Shambali colleague, but that she never had expected to find on an alien.

"What troubles you?"

Mercy held her gaze, and answered quietly, "Kinship. I feel like I know you."

Slowly the blue woman stood. The loose-fitting clothes she had been given in place of her armor somehow made her even more similar to the Omnic sage.

"And that stresses you?"

A sad nod. "We have wished to meet intelligent life beyond Earth for centuries. Can you… picture how disappointed I am? We have met you as enemies, not as brothers and sisters."

The alien's features softened and she spotted a glimmer of sympathy on the violet eyes.

"Not everything is said and done yet, Anika."

"I hope not."

Without complaint, the alien —she had already told Mercy that her full name was Valena Danaan and her species was called 'Asari'— laid herself on the hospital bed. Her eyes closed and she became expressionless as Anika lifted her shirt and undid the bandages on her lower chest. Genji's blade had cut deep, but apparently the medi-gel worked as fine on Asari as it did on humans, because the wound was healing fast. The same could be said about the grazes and bullet holes on her shoulders and lower neck where Tracer's rounds had punched through her shields and armor. Except for that, this blue woman was the picture of health.

"It's healing perfectly," she informed with a smile.

"You were concerned."

She sought simple words but they were hard to find. Hesitatingly she replied, "I was. Some of your… Turian… comrades did not react well to the treatment."

The Asari's eyes opened but her face did not change.

"How many perished?"

Mercy looked down.

"Seven. I'm sorry."

Valena stared at her. Anika did not look aside and allowed the alien to probe her.

At length, the Asari sat up and nodded.

"Your intent is true. It is a shame that you refused to let me show you what you could have done."

While Anika read no ill will on those words, Valena had — unwittingly? — rubbed salt on the wound. Like her mother before her, she was a healer first. The horribly injured aliens had had little chances to begin with, but they had reacted to the medi-gel with violent allergic reactions and seizures, each of them dying excruciatingly painful deaths. She had been no less shocked herself and the guilt in her soul was crushingly heavy.

"I'm putting myself in your hands if I accept what you propose."

"Yes, you would. And if something bad were to happen to you I would perish. I am a prisoner aboard your flagship, surrounded by your soldiers," the prisoner replied serenely.

With a thought, she asked herself, _Mom, mom, what would you do?_

"There are things your species needs to know, Anika," Valena pushed calmly, "if we are not to descend into war. This crude translator helps but will not get the point across. And, as we speak, you know that reinforcements are on their way."

Mercy shook her head. "I cannot help but think you're gaining something with it."

"If you have something to hide, you should be afraid."

 _I do have things to hide,_ she anguished. If this 'mind-melding' thing the Asari had proposed worked the way she understood it worked, Valena would get literally priceless insights into lots of things, not the least of which were cutting-edge medical research and Overwatch operational procedures, information that could become critical if they were embroiled in a protracted conflict.

"Can you keep things from me?"

"If I lied, how could you tell the difference?" was the rhetorical retort.

"You're not helping."

* * *

"They haven't left." Rear Admiral José Luis Ferriera, a short, slim, balding man with white beard and moustache, was circling the large holographic projector set in the center of the combat information room. The sensor array was trained on the alien fleet still on station above Pokhara. It was comprised by two cruisers, eleven escorts, and twenty other vessels without discernible weapon ports, reason for which it was assumed these would be transports.

His navigator was of Indian descent, captain, named Viswanathan Chaudhry. He had the round face, darker skin, and small moustache stereotypical of men from that country. "Begging your pardon, sir, I think I understand your surprise, but I'd like to know your thoughts."

"Why would they split their fleet and threw half of it at us, Chaudhry?" was the rhetorical question, which he followed up with the likely answers, "One, they thought they could stop us with that. Two, they wanted to buy time for their troops to escape. Everyone, what do you think?"

"Well, sir, considering the skill, daring and dedication of their boarding troops, I could go with either," the lead officer in charge of marine operations, a rugged Brazilian named Fernando Reynoso, answered clinically.

"But in light of what happened to their vanguard force, if I were in their place, I would have packed up and left yesterday," was the rebuttal of the commanding officer of the Nile, a small, thin, intimidating German woman with icy blue eyes. She was called Ingrid Braun.

Akira Takahara had been Ferriera's intelligence officer for years and this whole affair had left him with a deep, stubborn and possibly undeserved feeling of inadequacy, but that had not clouded his judgment. "As commander Reynoso pointed out, the soldiers our men faced in combat were very proficient and committed to their mission. You do not merely throw away such good troops. I'm inclined to believe something has held them back."

"Like what?" Ferriera asked quietly.

"A promise of coming reinforcements. Failure to evacuate their troops on time. A valuable find on the planet."

Reynoso was going to note such indecisiveness was unusual for the old Japanese officer, but that was a word that fit everything that had happened ever since the infamous trans-stellar accelerator on the neighboring Karam system had been found.

"We don't have that much time," he manifested.

"We don't," Ferriera agreed, "so we're going to retake the planet by storm."

"It's going to be costly, sir," Braun warned.

"I don't like it either, but I have my orders. People better informed and more capable than us has decided that appearing meek will hurt us more in the long run than the loss of some soldiers will hurt us in the short run," he retorted deadpan, irritated and angered by the idea of having to sacrifice men. He took a deep breath and continued, outlining a strategy that was taking form in his mind as he spoke, "Still, we're going to husband our troops as carefully as we can. While their guns are potent, neither their point defenses nor their EW suites are a match for us, so we're emptying the hangars out. Have the fighters scour those asteroid fields. Either they get out of the way or they lose the rest of their fleet. Their choice."

"And we deploy our dropships under the fighter cover?" Chaudhry suggested, disquiet coloring his voice.

"We'll have to task part of the strike craft on SEAD duties," Braun noted flatly. Since they did not know what the enemy had been up to on Pokhara, they had to assume the worst case scenario — the planetary defense grid was operational, the aliens had reinforced it with their own hardware, and they had dug in to wait for relief.

A yellow alert icon popped up on Ferriera's own omni-tool: "Admiral, I have received a burst transmission from the colony," the Nile's AI reported.

* * *

The medical bay of the Nile was proportionally bigger in size than that of the London, and it was crowded to capacity. With Shepard's cruiser sent back to Arcturus for repairs, the marines based on that ship had been relocated to the gigantic carrier. That included some of the people that had been injured on the collision and on the desperate firefight that had ensued afterwards.

" _Tovarich Palukhina,_ " Aaliyah greeted her with a smile. The head Overwatch medical officer was up to her eyeballs, surrounded by orderlies, tablet computer in one hand and tea cup in the other.

" _Tovarich Shepard'yeva,_ you surprise me," she smiled back. She turned briefly to one of her attendants and instructed, "Schedule him for surgery. He will have to get used to a prosthetic foot."

"Yes, doctor," the nurse replied and left.

And then, to another orderly, "Send this one to Vichaiyen. Splintered bones are right up his alley."

"Yes, doctor."

Finally she drained her cup and turned to Shepard again: "Was there anything you needed? How is your arm?" If anything, the breakneck pace did not tire her — quite the opposite, she seemed to thrive in that environment, given her sunny disposition and the glitter on her alert eyes. Organized chaos was her forte.

"My arm is doing great, thanks," she replied gratefully, and added, "In fact, it's doing even better than what I'd expected. My dad told me it would be like that, but I didn't believe him."

"You woman of small faith," the doctor pouted jokingly.

"That's battlefield experience for you."

" _Da_ , you go out there and get all mangled up and then it's our job to put you back together," she continued to pout.

"Hey, not our fault if this time the battle came to us."

" _Da, pravilno,_ " she conceded with a grin, "but you didn't come here to hear me complain. What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to know how my men are doing."

"Great, actually. The only casualty that will need some extended downtime is Dietrich. He has to get a replacement arm, like you did. Then Abbott and Tanaka have some concussions but nothing that will keep them down for long."

"And Martinsson?"

"She's doing well, but your corpsmen suggested keeping her in observation until tomorrow. I agreed."

"Good to know," Aaliyah smiled warmly. "She's going to hate missing out on the deployment, though."

"She will hate it a lot more to be stuck here for months on end if something crops up," Palukhina pointed out.

Shepard held her hands open before her. "Hey, I do shooting, not doctoring, ma'am. Where are they?"

"Beds 34, 41, 45 and 47."

"Thank you, ma'am. A lot. Really."

"We never get enough of that," Palukhina pouted jokingly again. "Any time, _tovarich._ "

She went bed by bed, greeting every trooper — she knew everyone in her company by name —, having a word for each, whether it was a moment to mourn a fallen comrade, some stern or soft-voiced advice, or a joke on how that scar had been earned. Shepard wanted to believe she had the right word for everyone she saw there. Her growing confidence told her she was on the right track, but not quite there yet.

At last, she reached bed 47: "Welcome back, Martinsson," Shepard smiled as she saw Astrid's eyes open.

"Lady Doomfist, ma'am," she joked tiredly and half-grinned, "I just needed to take a nap, that's all."

"And picked the perfect moment for that."

The girl did not look well. Her skin had an unhealthy pallor to it. She noticed Shepard's inquisitive look and asked deadpan, "How do I look? Hospital gowns aren't the latest fashion."

"You've had worse days. Last time you were on furlough and you picked a fight with that Siberian fellow from the Volga, for one."

A snort, and a painful grimace before asking quietly, "How many?"

Aaliyah also turned serious as she answered, "A hundred and sixteen in our ship alone. The Buenos Aires and the Belfast were almost gutted and lost over half their crews. The San Francisco was lost with all hands."

The blonde paled and her eyes glistened with tears. She confessed, "I fancied an engineer on the San Francisco."

Shepard held her hand. "I'm sorry, Astrid."

"We were keeping it quiet… we both knew my spec is about as dangerous as being a bomb tech…" Martinsson was nowhere nearly as stolid as her superior, which only made it that much more painful to watch. Aaliyah thought for a second about asking for his name, but doing so would have been to twist the knife in the wound. Nobody had escaped the loss of the cruiser.

The shieldbearer managed to compose herself after choking back a sob, and added quietly, "We have to... to thank for the Overwatch crew, don't we, ma'am?"

She wondered how she was going to go about it, then muttered, "We have to thank someone else, too."

"Of course… they didn't save the ship all by themselves," was the somewhat bitter retort, missing the point.

Aaliyah shook her head, and replied, "Someone else I held off on deck 7 in the London."

The shieldbearer stared at her, briefly puzzled, then astounded:

"How—what—"

"The boarders set him free," she said simply, then she related the frantic firefight next to Reaper's cell as briefly and faithfully as she could.

Astrid had no recourse but to believe her — after all, Shepard was there, alive and all. "I'll be damned, ma'am. The bad guys release another bad guy who ends up saving the good guys."

"Try walking in my shoes, Astrid."

"Wait—you mentioned that happened in the London? Where are we?"

"We're aboard the Nile. The London had to be sent back to Arcturus. I'm checking up on everyone here before mustering for deployment."

Only then did Astrid notice that Shepard was loaded for bear: she was fully decked in combat armor, a duffle bag by the side of her chair. Instantly she uttered, mortified, "Damn it, ma'am, you're going down there without me?"

"Specialist—no, _sergeant_ Martinsson, it's okay. You did a stellar job against an enemy we knew dick about, a skilled, well armed and well coordinated enemy that was determined to blow us all to fine dust. And don't get too far ahead of yourself, you're touching down tomorrow if nothing unexpected crops up with your wound. Marcia and Yelena both said so."

Astrid sighed in relief and quipped, "That's better. I didn't want to leave you people in the hands of some wet-nosed rookie who doesn't know which side of the brace faces the enemy." Then a spark lit her eyes: "Sergeant, ma'am? You think I should apply for officer school?"

Shepard grinned. "You stay cool under fire, and you do the right thing at the right moment. Plus you're willing to put yourself in harm's way for your crew. If that doesn't make a great leader, you tell me what does." She stood up. "Tell me in advance before you apply. I'll have another nice commendation letter signed by Song and Zaryanova waiting for you."

Martinsson looked positively better now. It was not enough to mitigate the grief for her lover, but the news had helped greatly. "Thanks, ma'am. Coming from you that means a lot."

Aaliyah hoisted her duffle bag. "Great. Now stop having feelings and get well. I need my shieldmaiden back on her feet."

Astrid saluted. "Aye aye, ma'am. And congratulations on your promotion, too."

Shepard grinned again, knowing she would not have missed the extra stripe on her shoulder, and left her.

* * *

"Commander's on deck!" Harriot barked as she entered the main deck of the dropship. At once the already seated and belted hundred-odd troopers saluted.

"At ease," Aaliyah acknowledged. She was going through the motions out of habit, having seen Visconti deliver such briefings time and time again — and it was a good thing that she was used to that, even if she was the one handling the briefing this time, because her own mind was numbed by the shock of the things she had heard in turn when she had been briefed by John Morrison and Anika Ziegler themselves.

"There's a change of plans," she started, as her mind once again went through what she had rehearsed time and time again. She announced first, "We received a last-minute report from the surface of Pokhara. Here's part of what we got."

An omni-tool command, and the lights dimmed noticeably. Behind her, a hologram projector started playing a video feed: a brunette woman arrayed in light military fatigues was filming herself. She seemed to be in a cellar of some kind, and the background noise hinted at many people moving things or checking equipment:

"Hello, this is ensign Williams, attached to the Pokhara planetary defense force. I don't know if this will get out, but hours ago the occupying force left the civilian quarters. They've fortified the borehole where the eezo vein was struck, but other than keeping people away from there they're not doing anything hostile. The starport is heavily guarded as well, and new troops are landing, but they're not digging in on the town; instead, they're going to the mines. The wide-spectrum signal jamming they had in place was also lifted, so I believe you'll—" something drew her attention away from the recorder in her omni-tool; it could not be heard, but she was surprised by the news: "I just was told that there's shooting, repeat, shooting reported in the mining complex. It isn't us attacking them, but we don't dare get any closer, we don't have anything like the numbers or the guns to storm the place. We can mark safe LZs for deployment. Please advice." Then the video froze.

"Our orders have changed," she noted, and gave the details, "we have to proceed to the LZs the militias have marked for us, secure the starport and investigate what's happening at the eezo mine. Clearly the enemy has had some sort of unexpected problem and we're going to profit from this, but if that same problem can also affect us, we have to be prepared.

"Next, you may have noticed we have guests aboard," she noted, and all eyes were drawn to the two squads that bore the Overwatch crest. "They've been tasked to us as teams PHALANX and SCALPEL. Get used to them because you're going to work with them in a permanent basis from now on."

A chorus of yeses answered her. _Now, for the really juicy stuff,_ she thought as she continued, "Finally, we have some hard intel about our enemy, the quality of their equipment and their capabilities. It's being uploaded into your omni-tools as I speak. Since we've all finished high school here I should guess you would all digest this carefully on your own, but better safe than sorry."

* * *

"Vulture Theta three-dash-six, this is Nile control. You're cleared for lunch. Good luck out there."

"Nile actual, this is Vulture Theta three-dash-six. Thanks. Initiating takeoff. Out."

The engines of the Montauk dropship — actually, an oversized version of the Kodiak shuttle, and proportionally slower and more sluggish — roared to life and propelled the craft out of the cavernous hangar of the Nile, to join the other five members of the Vulture Theta three flight; then they scattered and intermixed with the fighters covering them. The numbers were staggering: over eight hundred fighter-bombers under LAI control and another hundred and twenty flown by Omnics.

The passenger deck of the Montauk was quiet. There was none of the bantering and chattering that came before immediate deployment. Instead, most were reviewing the briefing on the enemy forces. The rest was lost in thought. Except for a few who appeared to be sleeping, everyone was trying to cope with the impact of what they had been told.

Shepard was not one of the lucky dreamers. Seated among her troops, surrounded by squad leaders and the two senior Overwatch agents present, her mind was on overdrive. A small part of her subconscious wished she had not been entrusted with such a responsibility, but her mind kept that nagging feeling tightly boxed and out of the way, knowing she could not falter now.

Ahead of the dropship flight, the swarm of strike craft was hurtling towards the enemy fleet and approaching them fast.

* * *

Ferriera stared at the hologram. Right now, the drone fighters were close enough to the alien cruisers that, if they were using weaponry equal to that on the Nile, they could open fire on them now.

And yet nothing was happening. Not even some form of evasive action.

"Anything?" He asked the Nile AI and his officers.

"Negative, admiral," came the synthetic reply. "The enemy force is still holding station in a closed formation protecting their transports."

Chaudhry felt tempted to ask what was on everyone's minds, but held his tongue. The strike craft was within reach of long range guns, but still too far to be targeted with point defenses if the previous engagement served as indication. Ladar readouts indicated that they were well within sensor range of the enemy.

"Nile…" Ferriera hesitated a while, not understanding the situation, but as the fighters finally came within point defense range he ordered, "weapons tight until we are shot."

"Acknowledged, admiral."

Seconds ticked on. All the crew on the bridge of the Nile held their breaths as they watched the hologram.

The drone fighters broke like a wave through the alien formation, hundreds of them zipping past the ships, point defenses tracking them. But not firing.

Then there was a reaction.

An operator haltingly reported, "Admiral… the enemy force is on the move…"

"They are pulling away," Reynoso realized and wondered out loud: "They can't be abandoning their forces."

"No, they're letting us through," Braun noted, and added, "They're still maintaining their geosynchronous orbit."

Ferriera stared intently at the hologram, then started giving orders: "Hold the dropships. I want to know what's going on in the colony, right now. Reinforce our watches on the local accelerator and the one on the Karam system. Takahara… try to establish contact with the alien ships."

"Vulture Theta three, proceed to checkpoint SHORTSTOP and hold station there until further orders."

Shepard came out of her reverie at that. She unclasped her safety belts and went to the flight deck: "What's going on?"

Some tense ten-odd minutes later, the hologram projector in the CIC of the Nile changed to show a live feed. The main settlement in Pokhara was in full view: there were the hangars and structures of the starport, now brightly lit in the darkness of the night, and there the habitats were equally well lit—

There were flashes of blue on the perimeter of the strip mine, and the blossoming white, orange and red of a fiery explosion erupting from the borehole. Quickly the flashes became an almost solid glow, and gunfire rained on—

"Enhance," Ferriera demanded.

The picture zoomed in. At once it became evident that there was a huge battle raging within the perimeter of the mining complex; the alien invaders were manning the perimeter and literally raining fire on what could only be described as cyborgs, given the many metal parts and blue or red lights on them.

"These are based… on the invaders?" Chaudhry asked, incredulous.

"It seems to be the case," Takahara noted gravely, because that was exactly what the feeds showed: the cyborgs appeared to be some grotesquerie modeled off a Turian married with _something else_.

"That's why they let us through," the veteran Japanese officer concluded: "Something has went very wrong down there and they can't deal with it alone."

"Tough luck for them," Ferriera growled, then ordered in machinegun succession: "As of this moment, we are effectively an Exodus force. Retask one third of the fighters to close air support. All dropships converge on LZs close to the habitats. I want our ships reconditioned to make space for refugees on the double. Send a CRITIC message to Arcturus and request ships to evacuate the colony." He hesitated a while, then, after alternately looking at the hologram projector and the faces of his officers, he issued one last command: "Activate Reaper and have him stand by for deployment."

"He's under Overwatch jurisdiction, sir," Reynoso noted quietly.

"To hell with jurisdictions," was the sharp retort. "Get it done."

"Yes sir."

"Admiral! We are picking up alerts from the observation post near the Karam accelerator!" That said, the operator depicted the feeds they were getting on a small side hologram projected by the main presenter.

"Enhance," Ferriera ordered, then he paled and breathed, "Here they come."

* * *

Appendix: initial report on alien species encountered in Pokhara, by A. Ziegler

"The enemy forces that boarded our ships were mostly comprised by members of this species. We have learned that they call themselves 'Turians.' The average specimen thus far observed is slightly taller and faster than a human adult. You may immediately notice that they have metallic plates and scales on their skin, but that confers them little in the way of a defense.

"Their senses are mostly on par with that of a human, except for their eyesight; they can see clearly at much longer ranges and the limited studies performed so far reveal that they have five different kinds of cone cells (as opposed to the three usual in humans), which means that they can distinguish colors well beyond the capability of the human eye. It should be safe to assume that any kind of active camouflage available to us is going to be ineffective against them.

"These creatures have blue blood, like some arthropods and mollusks from Earth; like them, they have hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin, but one critical point of their physiology is that their entire biochemistry is based on dextro-amino acids, as opposed to human biochemistry, which runs on levo-amino acids instead. If prisoners are taken and some require medical attention, enlisting the aid of one of their own corpsmen is advised, for merely trying to apply standard issue medi-gel will result on virulent anaphylactic shock and death after seven to ten minutes.

"Their weapons rely on mass effect fields, and are much more refined than our railguns. One critical advantage they have is that a single magazine is worth tens of thousands of shots, since their weapons shave slivers off a solid metal core and propel them at great speeds. A single round fired by one of their assault rifles has twice as much muzzle energy as one fired by ours, despite the much smaller caliber.

"We have found, however, that the enemy has absolutely no knowledge of hardlight technology, and while they can eventually defeat our shields, they fare poorly against them. Particle barriers are extremely effective defenses as well. Also, their weapons suffer from overheating issues after extended firing, but firing in short bursts mostly negates this problem. Larger weapons like sniper rifles work on similar principles, and both their strengths and their weaknesses are magnified — their anti-materiel rifles are almost as powerful as a first-generation railgun, while requiring about five percent of the energy we use to propel our slugs, but they lack semi-automatic fire capability.

"A few of the boarders belonged to a different species. They are known as 'Asari'. While we have observed both males and females among the Turians, every Asari we have met thus far has feminine characteristics and greatly resembles a human female, except for their skin pigmentation, fleshy growths instead of hair, and lack of ears. Despite that, they have good hearing and their eyesight is similar to that of a healthy adult human. Their biochemistry is based in levo-amino acids and strikingly humanlike, despite their blood being purple in color, a quirk we speculate to be due to the presence of high levels of an organic compound heavy on element zero. Medi-gel works well on them, as also do Caduceus-based radiation-nano machine treatments.

"Asari can create, manipulate and project mass effect fields and kinetic forces without using weapons or instruments. A visible signature of this ability is that they will glow visibly with blue light akin to fire before unleashing their talents. While they have been observed producing point singularities, using psychokinesis allowing for anything between fine motor manipulation and compressing metal, explosively disrupting conflicting mass effect fields, and projecting shockwaves, the true extent of their capabilities is an enigma. Some of the talents displayed were dependent on concentration, but some others were not, so no rule of thumb can be provided as of this time."

* * *

 **Author's note:** As usual, kudos to **_BrokenLifeCycle_** for his priceless help. Also, **Reikson** gets brownie points for pointing out Asari blood to be purple instead of red.


	9. Operation Dynamo - Beachhead

Khyar system

The ride on the Montauk's passenger deck became bumpy and rough as the dropship started its descent. Palms sweated, hearts raced. There was now a little banter, especially among the experienced marines that were experts at dealing with such insertions. The dropship had no windows, but the rollercoaster-like ride was a clear indication that they were going through some cloud cover.

Then the shocks passed, and the seatbelt light went off: "Approaching LZ. Deployment in three minutes," a synthesized voice announced.

"That's our call, people, get ready!" Shepard hollered.

The passenger deck became a frenzy of activity as troopers unclasped their seat belts and readied their weapons and equipment. Fresh magazines were jammed into rifles, hardlight projectors powered up, shield arrays recycled and tested.

The Montauk decelerated notably. They were very near their destination now. Alarm klaxons and rotating lights turned on, and synthesized voices warned the troopers to stay clear from the ramp… everyone braced for the landing as the ramp started opening and the roar of the wind flooded the deck…

There was a thump, and before the ramp had touched the ground troopers were already storming out of the dropship at the sound of Shepard's rousing, "MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!"

Militia deployed around the LZ were waving them towards a nearby habitat, a tall structure of honeycombed metal and crystal. Shepard took a brief look at the starry night sky, and noted that dropships were landing everywhere without a problem, the myriad fighter craft zipping past them. It was a very busy sky, but there was no anti-aircraft fire at all… and yet the distant thunder of gunfire reached her…

"Harriot, find out who's in charge of this outfit!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

As she watched another dropship unload its cargo of hardsuits and Bulwark mechs — a cutting-edge take on the Bastion units that had been the mainstay opponents of Overwatch during the First Omnic Crisis —, a brunette woman in light fatigues was brought before her. She saluted at once: "Ensign Ashley Williams reporting as ordered, ma'am."

"At ease, ensign," was the automatic reply, and then, "Any news on your father?"

"Negative, ma'am. Prisoners usually were taken to the starport. We have heard nothing about them yet," was the sober answer, but Shepard detected brittleness in her demeanor. Well, who wouldn't be anxious in her place?

Then her omni-tool flashed: "Shepard, this is Reynoso," the rugged Brazilian said on her earphones. "Enemy reinforcements have arrived. Disregard all previous objectives, except for establishing a secure perimeter and setting up gates. You are authorized to use lethal force in self-defense only." _WHAT?!_ "Is that clear, lieutenant commander?"

"Yes… yes, sir."

"Good. Reynoso out."

She stood flabbergasted for an instant, but before anyone could comment on her surprise, she issued new orders: "Set up strong points and barricade the streets. I want this place turned into a fortress yesterday. Bulwarks and company elements manning the guard posts, hardsuits and PHALANX team on reserve to deal with sneak attacks. SCALPEL team and command squad, we're moving out to deploy gates." Without waiting for responses, she turned to Williams: "You heard what I said. Select four men and put together a fire-team to assist us."

Ashley saluted, her eyes flashing: "Yes ma'am."

* * *

Their objective was a secondary power array, originally the first power plant to be built in the colony, and the closest one to the habitats. It was, nonetheless, a large installation, as it had to be to house the Tokamak fusion reactor.

"I see no sentinels, ma'am, not even the mechs the militia told us about," one of the Overwatch operatives reported as she lowered her canister rifle, a weapon not unlike that of the sniper that had assisted her aboard the London.

Shepard took another look at the compound. The large building was surrounded by a series of transformers and large ducts going underground to power other colony installations. Behind it, the sky flashed with the occasional explosions and blue tracers erupting from the mines. _What the hell is going on down there?_

"Leaving this place unguarded makes no damn sense at all," she uttered in frustration. "Keep looking, Kaname, I don't buy it. Williams?"

"They had people here," she answered. "Actually the only ones they let in were those in charge of maintaining it, plus their 'droid' assistants."

"'Droid' assistants?" One of the three omnics present repeated in puzzlement. This one was an engineer, armed with hardlight projectors and deployable traps and defenses. She went by the alias of Lumiscant.

"Yeah, they were really twitchy about sentient AIs, so we tried our best to pass them by as dumb worker droids. Still, they got a hint of something because at some point they started taking apart every omnic they could lay their hands on."

No one missed how she clenched her metal fists. "So it's not enough that our own creators used to hunt us, now we have aliens to contend with," she uttered with both disappointment and anger.

Shepard was checking the possible approaches, looking for a way in that did not require running into the open without cover, but there was no such thing as a safe route.

"I don't like this, but we'll have to take our chances," she stated, and as she spoke the thunder of a powerful detonation reached them and a billowing cloud of smoke and fire rose from far behind their objective, where the mines would be. She realized time was running out on them: "Schreieder, take Adhik, Amari, Shizuki and Olivera along with Williams' squad and go for the eastern entrance. I will take the western gate with the rest. Once we reach the facility proper, Adhik, Lumiscant and Taran have to get the gates set up ASAP."

"Understood, ma'am." Schreieder was, like many German Overwatch operatives, a modern take on Reinhardt — a mountain of muscle and armor wielding an equally huge close combat weapon. His team fell at once behind him, except for Amari; like her mother before her, she was an air combat specialist, but instead of a rocket launcher, her weapon of choice was an enormous anti-materiel railgun.

Shepard raced after Richardson the shieldbearer, followed by her own squad — except for Kaname, who had climbed atop a roof using a grappling hook and was playing both spotter and sniper — , and almost immediately lost sight of Schreieder's team, but Amari's jets still roared somewhere over her. Her eyes were darting all around, and she expected to hear either Amari's or Kaname's voice warning of enemy fire, but no such thing happened and they reached the gates to the power complex without incident.

"Clear west," she reported.

"Clear east," Schreieder replied over the radio.

"Amari? Anything?"

"I see movement between the starport and the mines, ma'am," she informed, "but nothing coming our way." The onboard AI printed a detection warning on her HUD: "They see me, that's for sure."

Shepard looked up and saw Amari maneuvering for concealment between the buildings. _Smart,_ she thought — but she had to be, crewing a miniature aircraft all by herself that could be blotted out of the sky faster than she could say 'anti-air fire'. She was about to tell her not to take any chances, but she refrained herself; if anyone would be aware of the risks, that would be the late Pharah's own daughter.

She met Schreieder's squad at the entrance to the main reactor building. Without a word, the trio of omnics got to work on setting up the gates, while the rest of her platoon fanned out to cover as much ground as possible. Seconds tensely trickled by.

Then at last: "Contact, coming from the north, Turian infantry, distance one-point-three clicks. Estimate platoon strength," Kaname reported quietly.

"Copy that," Shepard acknowledged. "Disposition?"

"They appear rather disorganized. Some of them seem to be wounded."

 _Rather disorganized…_ only then did she notice that the noises of the fighting had died down somewhat. "Weapons tight, everyone. Only fire on self-defense. Amari, rejoin us here."

"Roger."

Then, the noises of distant but closing gunfire reached them: "Command, incoming contacts are under attack," Kaname reported, and shared the feed from the camera built into her helmet — just in time for the rest to witness three of the Turian troopers scythed down by the bright red beam of a weapon fired from outside the sniper's view.

"That's no weapon of ours," Shepard manifested. "Everyone, stay on cover. Something is not right here."

"Copy that loud and clear," Schreieder acknowledged.

She tried to raise Reynoso on her omni-tool: "Nile actual, this is Shepard. We have visual contact with alien troopers engaged with unidentified forces, estimate one click from our position. Requesting ROE and situation update, over."

Then there was an abrupt red flash in the darkness, followed by a bright lance of searing light carving the side of a building east of their position, and Kaname's warning: "Command, alien platoon coming down the street, range eight hundred meters, besieged by an unknown force." The feed from the sniper revealed ghastly, grotesque shapes that were more or less Turian, but had blue or red lights and metal grafts all over their bodies.

Shepard turned to the omnic engineers: "How long before the gate is up?"

"Six minutes, nineteen seconds, ma'am," was the synthetic voiced-reply.

"Hurry that up! Shit's about to hit the fan here."

Tensely they waited as the echoes of the fighting drew ever closer. Then, at last, came Reynoso's reply: "Shepard, this is Nile actual. Turian forces are under attack by cyborgs of unknown origin coming from within the mines. Your rules of engagement are unchanged. Acknowledge, over."

Aaliyah had to take a second to catch her breath and digest the impact of the ghastly images of the cyborgs that Reynoso had attached with his reply. It was evident they were at least part Turian… or, more properly, they had once been Turians, and now were haphazard amalgamations of flesh and metal.

 _What the HELL is going on here?!_

On a hunch, she asked, "Command, request permission to engage cyborgs on sight and restrict ROEs to Turian and Asari forces only."

After an unusually long pause, the answer came: "Request granted. We have reinforcements available for you the moment your gate is up. Watch your fire, and report as necessary. Out."

"Yes sir. Out." She quickly relayed the change in orders to her team: "Everyone, weapons free on the unknown force attacking the Turians. Acknowledge."

"Excuse me, ma'am, we're not shooting the invaders?" It was Williams.

"Those are our orders, ensign, so watch your aim, is that clear?" Shepard retorted as professionally as she could.

"But ma'am—!"

"No BUTS, ensign, and not now! Clear?"

On her own position, Ashley cursed her impulsiveness and berated herself for speaking out, and replied as calmly as she could, "Yes, ma'am, clear."

"Good."

"Alien force almost out of the streets now, range two hundred and fifty meters. Cyborg forces closing in, estimate twice company strength, say again, twice company strength, range four hundred meters," Kaname reported quietly.

"Fire at will when you have a shot," was Shepard's order.

"Understood." The Japanese woman did not need to be told that twice. They did not hear her shot — her canister rifle was suppressed —, but the retreating Turians noticed at once when she felled one of their pursuers and sought cover on the entrances to the buildings lining both sides of the street that led to the power station; the cyborgs also noticed her shot, because fire started pouring down the street and towards her sniper's nest — scattered and inaccurate, but the enemy knew where she was. "Command, position taking fire," she reported coolly.

"SCALPEL, move in, move in, the rest provide backup for the engineering team!"

Schreieder wasted no time and broke cover, his squad-shield deployed. The whole Overwatch squad, with the exception of the engineers, lined up around or behind him. Shizuki's main weapon was a revolver grenade launcher, which she used to rain mines on the path of the incoming force; Amari did not take long to jump into the air and unleash a barrage of high-powered slugs on the bulk of the host attacking the Turians. Olivera, as the squad medic, remained close to Schreieder and next to Strokov — a particle cannon-toting frontliner who was way out of range yet but stood ready to assist the German — and Maritz — a riflewoman equipped like Shepard herself, wielding a battle rifle with a grenade launcher under the barrel.

The surviving Turians, caught in the middle, had a moment of confusion but quickly noticed that they were not being targeted by Shepard's squad, and used the episode to retreat behind the fences surrounding the power plant and take cover amidst all the machinery there. "Support teams, watch your fire, watch your fire," Aaliyah cautioned.

Then, at last, some of the attackers came into view, and yes, it was unmistakable that those things had been Turian before — but Shepard had little time to wonder more about them because they immediately locked in on Schreieder's barrier and focused their fire on him. Quickly, the Overwatch agent threw up a spherical shield around them, but no defense would last long against that volume of fire and everyone knew it. Strokov jumped forward courageously, raining plasma blasts on the horde of horrors, and once the bubble collapsed he activated his barrier and covered his retreat—

"VITALY!" Olivera screamed as the barrier gave way and they got one last glimpse of the Russian's surprised face before he was punched around by the intense stream of fire and tossed aside like a rag doll.

"Shit! Stay on cover, stay on cover!" Shepard hollered, then a red light glowed somewhere in the street out of their view: "INCOMING!"

A bright, red lance of light streaked with a humming noise right through the walls of a building and reached for Amari, but the airborne trooper was already moving and diving and the attack narrowly missed her. Immediately she spun around in place, fired a single snapshot in response, and dove to the ground, weaving and dodging to throw the enemy aim off balance.

The Turians made the best out of Strokov's sacrifice and reorganized themselves quickly, raining fire on the incoming cybernetic horrors and allowing Schreieder enough time to recover the horribly wounded frontliner and retreat to safety. Noticing that, at least for the time being, they would have nothing to fear from the aliens, Shepard pointed at Aliyev and Richardson and the three of them left her position by the building to join Schreieder behind a series of large ducts. At that moment, the gate the three omnics were working on went active, and four Bulwark mechs immediately joined their position; the huge war machines deployed in pairs, shifted into their sentry configuration, and immediately locked in on the approaching cyborgs. Unsurprisingly, the things could not endure that volume of firepower for long, but they did surprise both aliens and humans by pulling back.

In the brief lull, they were approached by one of the tall aliens and an Asari. They saw them coming, and they all stared at each other uncomfortably for a few instants until Aaliyah spoke, "I'm lieutenant commander Aaliyah Shepard, Alliance Navy. Identify yourselves."

She waited for the automatic AI translation, hoping nothing would get lost in the way.

Then the Turian stepped forward. "Garrus Vakarian, Turian Hierarchy. My companion is De'Alia Vasir, Asari Republics. You may be in violation of more Citadel laws than I care to remember but I'll be damned if I'm not glad of seeing you." He respectfully bowed his head. "We… are sorry for your comrade. If not for him we would all be dead now. How is he?"

Shepard was taken aback by Vakarian's concern, and that actually got her brain working on a particular direction — enemy or not, they were decent, at least by their own standards. That notion, coupled with the sheer professionalism of his troop, told her she could trust him, at least for now.

Olivera was struggling to remove the heavy plates of the powered armor. The horrified expression on the medic's face told her much, but nonetheless, she asked: "Prognosis?"

"Pretty bad, ma'am… His armor is almost _melted_ in places. What the hell are they shooting at us with?" she asked rhetorically in exasperation.

"Vakarian, what are these things?" Shepard asked in turn.

She could not see the Turian's face behind the obscured helmet, but the tone of his voice was clear enough: "You mean you don't know what's down there."

"Down where? I understand an eezo vein was struck."

Vakarian was clearly flustered: "You didn't know. Great. So it's our fault."

"Command, enemy forces coming around the sides. This position is compromised, I must relocate," Kaname reported quietly over the radio.

Shepard closed her eyes for a few instants to clear her mind. Sending Aliyev, Richardson and Schreieder on their usual roles against those cyborgs would be tantamount to throwing their lives away — in such concentration, guns powerful enough to overwhelm a particle barrier would make short work of them.

"Amari, provide cover for Kaname, but don't take your chances," she ordered, and then, "Nile actual, this is Shepard. We have made contact with alien forces and unknown hostiles near our gate. Enemy is closing in in force, estimate battalion strength. Requesting heavy armor and close air support, over."

"Acknowledged, stand by," was the response of the Nile's AI. "Alien disposition?"

"Not hostile, say again not hostile—"

The warning interrupted her: "INCOMING!"

Again, a burning ruby beam hummed through the air — and one of the Bulwarks planted on the roof of the power plant was blown to pieces. A Turian shouted something that clearly meant a warning to stay in cover, as immediately fire started raining on them from the street to their west.

"Shepard, report your status!" Nile demanded.

"Nile, we're under attack, repeat we're being attacked! Enemy forces have superior weaponry and numbers, we got a casualty and a destroyed Bulwark. We need help here, and we need it fast!"

"Understood. It's being worked on. Please stand by." Just great, being put on hold by a goddamn AI, Shepard fumed, but there was little she could do.

"Enemy… enemy heavy weapons platform in sight," Kaname reported haltingly, fear seeping into her monotone voice. When the sniper shared the feed from her own omni-tool Aaliyah also recoiled: that… _thing…_ was a terrifying mishmash of many Turians clumped together, a large insect-like carapace plate on its upper side. Six glowing eyes were clustered around a gaping maw, four articulated limbs tipped with wicked talons springing from its sides. The horror moved slowly, hovering half a meter over the ground. More cyborg aberrations surged on its sides, shooting as they advanced, caring not for the incoming fire.

"What the hell is that thing?" Williams was terrified.

"A target," Shepard retorted with an edge, struggling to keep her own fear at bay. "Everyone, dig in, and that also means you, Schreieder! Amari, do you have a clear shot?"

"Negative, negative, incoming fire is too heavy!"

"Stay on cover!" Vakarian and Vasir had ran to rejoin their squad, and Shepard put her concerns about the aliens aside for the time being. The Bulwarks had already retreated within the power plant, their omnic AIs clearly aware that they were easy targets for the enemy heavy weapons, but she would have a new use for them: "Bulwark group, redeploy among the ducts! Make sure each of you cover different fire arcs," she ordered, then: "SCALPEL, provide support for the alien platoon! Command squad and militia, you got the eastern street!"

She took position behind a thick duct right between a part of SCALPEL and the Turian force, peeked around cover, acquired a target, and pulled the trigger. She caught sight of the cyborg's chest exploding in a shower of metal and blackened tissue, but return fire was almost instantaneous and would have scythed through her if she had not been fast enough to retreat behind cover. She clenched her jaw, counted a few seconds and tried that again, but her movement was being watched and she barely had enough time to again retreat to safety—

—then she caught a blue flash by the corner of her eye and saw Vasir turn ablaze, and an orb of pulsing, crackling darkness materialized right in the middle of the enemy force. Most of the Turians rushed to screen her and keep her covered, while a single fire team seized the chance to rain explosives on the cluster of attackers rendered helpless. She immediately did the same, firing a fully charged blast of the hardlight projector on her left palm; the Overwatch team followed suit, and the street became an inferno of burning shrapnel and plasma—

—but nothing of that seemed to put a dent on the horror that slowly hovered towards them. A red spark blossomed on its maw, and quickly became a light so powerful that it hurt to look at it: "EVERYONE, MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!"

The Turians saw it coming. One of them, far from throwing herself to the ground, grabbed a bunch of explosive discs and raced towards the monstrosity—

—and was literally vaporized by the blazing beam that burned through her so fast that it did not even allow for the explosives to ignite. The horror lurched on, inching ever closer, now within the pull of the singularity the Asari had created—

—and now Vasir followed up with another attack that appeared to be similar to a toroid of superheated plasma—

—and the singularity detonated violently, sending the monster flying away. Neither Amari nor Kaname wasted any time to shoot at its exposed underbelly when it landed on its head. Instead of exploding, the thing let out a terrible metallic screech that seared the ears, then the many lights on its body shorted out.

Only then, when relief flooded Shepard like a wave, did she notice the buzzsaw-like sound of the Bulwark chain guns firing nonstop: "Harriot, report!"

"Lemarchand and Moronta are incapacitated, the rest of us have taken fire but we can still fight," was the answer, punctuated by the loud sound of his rifle firing, and he added, "There's just so many of them!"

"How are things on your end?" The Turian leader by the name of Vakarian asked her.

"How is your team?" Shepard started counting. The same beam that had disintegrated the suicide bomber had punched clean through a section of the solid metal ducts the Turians had been using for cover.

He noticed her look: "There's still enough of us to help."

 _Don't you feel grief? What kind of soldiers are you?_ "Alright, we can use it!"

SCALPEL and the aliens joined the battle for the eastern gate, taking positions on either side of the beleaguered marines and Williams' militia. Shepard had switched her rifle for Lemarchand's hardlight projector, which she used — coupled with the same weapon on her cybernetic arm — to rain blast after blast on the incoming horrors, attacks that proved far more effective than her battle rifle, as they would simply pass through the cyborgs wreaking havoc on their way.

Then Amari caught the red glow around a corner some two hundred-odd meters away from them: "INCOMING!"

By now everyone knew what that warning meant and they quickly scrambled to retreat deeper inside the complex, but it was not enough. The beam pierced through walls, ducts, and machinery alike, burning through cover as if it was not there. There was a high pitched scream:

"Vasir!" Vakarian sprang to his feet and ran towards the Asari that, curled up on the ground, clutched her side. Her right arm and part of her right leg had vanished:

"Medic!" Shepard yelled, ran to them, and deployed her squad-shield: "Get her to cover, now!"

Olivera did not need to be ordered that twice: her Valkyrie suit allowed her to fly to her side, pick her up, and retreat behind the protective mass of a Bulwark under the covering fire of Amari and Kaname.

"We can't last much longer here," Vakarian muttered with an edge.

"I'm working on that," Shepard retorted through her teeth, briefly noticing the Turian had not even asked if they knew how to treat an Asari, then yelled on the radio: "Nile, we're getting torn to shreds here! Where's the goddamned backup already?!"

The answer came in the form of low-flying drone fighter-bombers. The craft blazed overhead, and below them, the street erupted in explosions that sent scorched metal and burned flesh flying everywhere. Aaliyah caught a glimpse of the misshapen bulk of the cybernetic monstrosity reeling under the hits:

"Heavy support unit, eleven o'clock!" She followed her report with a barrage of hardlight blasts.

"On target," Amari replied, and in a split-second, she locked in on the maw of the thing and blew a high-velocity slug right through it. This time, there was no screech, but a blinding flash and a huge ball of blue fire instead.

"Target, cease fire," Shepard acknowledged the kill, then scanned the devastated street before her for enemies. She saw nothing other than cyborg husks and debris, and the rest of the squad apparently did not find anything either:

"Clear!" Maritz, the Overwatch riflewoman, reported loudly.

Shepard sighed in relief. "That was a close call," she muttered.

"Too close, ma'am," Schreieder agreed stonily. He was by Strokov's side. Olivera had removed the charred remains of his armor, soaked his skin in medi-gel and left behind some beacons streaming autonomous nanomachines into him, but he had been thoroughly disfigured. He was alive, but he would not fight again in this conflict.

"We can't deploy particle barriers in spearheading roles against these things, and squad-shields can take only so much fire," the German added.

"We'll have to adjust our tactics," Shepard agreed, equally grim, and turned her head to see Vakarian, who was watching silently how Olivera worked on the Asari. She approached the knot of Turian troopers and demanded: "You said earlier that it was your fault. Explain yourself."

The blank-faced Maritz and the omnic by the name of Lumiscant joined her, and the Alliance and Citadel troopers measured each other for a tense second, everyone reminded, after the fight was done, that they were enemies.

"You didn't find just an eezo vein here," Vakarian spoke at last. "You know mass effect tech, so I'm going to assume you're familiar with the Protheans. They mastered eezo, and stockpiles of the stuff or untapped reserves have been found in or around ruins all over the galaxy, but we found something else here. We found it, not you, you didn't go deep enough."

Shepard kept her eyes on the Turian leader. "And that is…"

"Can't say. I haven't seen it myself. But whatever it is, it ate entire battalions and spat them out in that shape," he retorted with a vague gesture pointing at the charred husks. "I'm not surprised my superiors let you through. We can't keep a lid on this on our own with the few troops we had here."

"So you hope we're going to be your cannon fodder."

"Your what?"

She bit her lip and rephrased her words, "You hope we're going to die in your stead."

Vakarian's face darkened. "Yeah, you would see it that way. Some of my fellows would use you like that. Me?" A snort. "You just saved the lives of the few men I have left. That means I'm indebted to you, enemy or not. We'd prefer not to fight you."

"But you still would."

A very humanlike shrug and he replied, "If a direct superior still orders me to do it — after debriefing me. We're not machines or clones you can just order around. Are you?"

Shepard ignored the challenge, but not the message implied. This small knot of Turian survivors would probably defy orders to fire on them. She felt tempted to ask Williams about her thoughts, since she had been on the ground from day one, but she already knew what she was going to say — having her father held hostage by the Turians had a positively antagonistic effect, that was for certain.

"Do you know what they say about curiosity?" Shepard asked with an edge instead.

"We have a saying that goes like that, and… I warned against digging there until specialists arrived. They didn't listen to me."

Instantly she was reminded of her own experience on the Moon. Unexpectedly she groaned, "I know everything there is to know about dickhead superiors."

Vakarian snorted and commented deadpan, "Good to know we don't have the monopoly on idiots."

* * *

Ferriera felt small. He was in command of the largest fleet ever assembled: two Amazon-class carriers, leviathan starships carrying in excess of four hundred LAI drone fighter-bombers each and testament to the symbiosis between omnics and humans; seventeen Naples-class cruisers, each of them imposing warships on their own right, armed with the most powerful guns the Alliance had ever fitted into a vessel; over eighty frigates, some armed to the teeth as dedicated anti-strike craft gunships, some others equipped for boarding operations, some more specialized as electronic warfare platforms and some more still geared for planetary assault missions; and over two hundred transport ships of all sizes…

And yet the alien fleet hopelessly outnumbered them. The flagship, a huge cross-shaped vessel with humongous engines, was more than twice as big as the Nile, and dwarfed the four arrow-shaped behemoths flanking it — supersized versions of the escorts that had rammed his cruisers mere days before. Thirty cruisers, over a hundred frigates, and few strike craft but almost three hundred escorts.

The collected might of the Arcturus 2nd Fleet seemed paltry. Even more so as he stared at it through the window of the observation deck.

The single door on the oval-shaped room opened. Seven aliens walked in, four of them Asari guards; the remaining three dressed in ceremonial clothes, and were each another Asari, a Turian, and a tall, lanky, bulgy-eyed creature he had never seen before.

"Welcome to the Destiny Ascension, Admiral," the blue-skinned woman greeted him. "I am Councillor Melara, and I speak for the Asari Republics. My colleagues are Councillor Paratus for the Turian Hierarchy, and Dalatrass Talron, Councillor for the Salarian Union. We are the ruling body of the Citadel Council."

By the corner of his eye, Ferriera observed the guards. They hardly breathed. Whatever the 'Citadel Council' was, it was important. The sheer dignity of the councillors was something even he could notice. "Your Excellencies," he greeted them respectfully. "I am Admiral José Luis Ferriera, commanding officer of the Pokhara Expeditionary Force. My companions are Strike Commander John Morrison and Tekhartha Zenyatta of the Shambali." Both the Overwatch commander and the omnic monk briefly bowed their heads in greeting.

He noticed their discomfiture at once, and Melara spoke, "I understand your mechanical companion is an AI?"

"That is correct," Zenyatta replied cordially, and continued without pause: "I have received word from my brothers and sisters on the colony, Councillor Melara. They have been methodically hunted down and dismantled, whereas their fellow human citizens were not accorded such treatment. What have we done to merit such slaughter? My fellow omnics lived peacefully and harmed no one."

Bringing along the revered omnic leader had been a masterstroke, Ferriera realized immediately, as he noticed how taken aback the councillors were.

"AI development is banned throughout Citadel space for the best of reasons," Paratus stated dryly.

"And this is not Citadel space, councillor," Morrison countered, equally dry.

"And which reasons would those be?" Zenyatta inquired calmly.

Talron, the Salarian Union representative, answered his question: "If you ever get to meet a Quarian, you can ask her for details. They created a whole race of synthetic servants. Eventually they rose against them and expelled them from their homeworld."

"Even though they claimed all their work had been done legally—"

Respectfully Zenyatta interrupted the Asari with a raised hand. "'Servants,' your colleague said. Therein lies the fault of those Quarians you mention."

"We had to deal with synthetic uprisings of our own, your Excellencies," Ferriera intervened then, "but it was not something unanimous. Some omnics helped us quell them."

"And that is something a lot of people keeps finding new ways to ignore," Morrison muttered.

Paratus hardened his face. "So these synthetics have risen in arms against you and yet you still keep them around." He left the rest unsaid, but it was obvious he regarded them with a mixture of contempt and disbelief.

Morrison took one step forward. "I don't know your laws. I only know that you occupied one of our colonies, singled out some of our citizens and massacred them. Hardly the best way to introduce yourselves to another civilization."

The Turian's eyes blazed and his voice lowered: "Watch your words, barbarian. We have policed this galaxy for a thousand years and defeated foes stronger and craftier than you. It's not my concern if you're too stubborn to understand the reasons for the law. It's _yours_."

The Overwatch commander did not back down under the threat. "Zenyatta is my comrade and my friend. If you come after him and his kin I will fight you." His icy glare communicated the message loudly and clearly: _to the death if needs be._

Ferriera winced at the exchange, but what could he say? The leadership back at Arcturus had already stated that there would be no concessions whatsoever to an enemy that had attacked first. It was easy to say that in friendly territory, but he was aboard the alien flagship, surrounded by their forces, and confronted with the specter of a horribly unequal battle with a superior adversary.

Again Zenyatta raised a hand: "Enough have died already. Why must we resort to violence to settle our differences? Councillors, humans and omnics have fought in the past and are now allies and equals. I would like to know more about these Quarians you mention, but one thing I can tell you now: had they treated their creations as equals as well, probably they would not be outcasts now."

The Asari and the tall, lanky alien briefly exchanged glances. "Regrettably, we must stand behind our Turian comrade in this issue," Talron declared. "The case of the Quarians and their Geth creations is not the only one. Other civilizations came before ours and were destroyed by synthetic uprisings. The law is meant to curb the chances of other such calamities taking place. As is the law that punishes tampering with mass relays."

"And yet, you are correct that you should have been informed beforehand," Melara stated, and both Paratus and Talron turned to her in surprise. "Had it been done so, perhaps our differences would not be yet settled, but much loss of life could have been avoided."

Paratus glared at the Asari, and she returned the glare blankly. Then the Turian turned back to Ferriera and his fellows: "As Councillor Melara says, our differences will not be settled easily. But I admit freely that she has a point. If you would then agree, let me propose an armistice while we negotiate a final agreement."

Ferriera was surprised: _The hawk concedes? Just like that?_ "What would be the terms?"

* * *

 **Author's note:** as usual, kudos to _**BrokenLifeCycle**_ for proofreading and brainstorming.


	10. Operation Dynamo - Descent

Khyar system - Pokhara, planetary surface

Lumiscant, the omnic engineer, hunched over the husk of one of the cyborgs they had fought not an hour ago. Her articulated hands picked at the many metal parts on the charred corpse.

"So?" Shepard asked guardedly. Vakarian was a few steps away, watching as well.

"'So?'" she echoed, "I pity the poor bitch. That's 'so'. Whatever got its hands on… her, I think, eviscerated her while she still was alive. Notice this." She pointed at the ocular implants; there was still some fresh blue blood around them. "They tore her eyes out and replaced them with these things."

Without ceremony, she pulled the implants out and tossed them over to Shepard. They were ugly, multifaceted, angular things, vaguely reminiscent of an insect's eye. Next, she tossed a disc-shaped object that landed at Vakarian's feet:

"At least she didn't blow up when we shot her. She has more of these in her insides. You're familiar with this stuff, right?"

The Turian picked it up and his expression twisted into something Shepard guessed was a wince, then bowed his head. "Didn't you find any identity discs?"

The omnic seemed to ignore him for a few instants, continuing work on the corpse instead, but eventually, she replied deadpan: "So you finally summoned up some spine to talk to the evil robot. Good for you. And no, no identity disc. You chip your troops?" when Vakarian did not reply, she pressed her point, "You want help, I need info. I have info, you get help. Get it?"

In spite of himself, Garrus snorted. "Your engineer is… feisty. To put it nicely," then he replied, "If by 'chip' you mean some kind of implant to identify us, then yes, we are chipped."

"If you want the evil robot to help you I need the cipher to read it and see if these things can be tracked. Otherwise, it's your problem." That said, the omnic turned back to her dissection work.

Someone else would have found Lumiscant's attitude rather comical, but Shepard did not. Thousands of omnics had been killed by the Turians — thousands of _Shambali_ at that. Some could be brought back by means of re-attaching their memory cores into new frames, but most were gone.

"She's angry. I would be too if you had slaughtered thousands of my fellow humans."

"It's different," the Turian said automatically. "They are synths—"

"The most peace-loving and friendly synths you're ever going to come across," Shepard retorted bluntly. "Of all omnics, you went and killed those who not only espoused peace but actively preached for it. You could have fucked up worse — if you had put some _serious_ effort into it."

Vakarian glared at her. "If you ever get to visit the Citadel, look around for a Quarian and try telling her about 'nice AIs'. I could point you to a few worlds that are nothing but ruins because of synthetic uprisings."

He let that sink in and then added, "Now all we can do about you is hoping it doesn't happen."

She did not look back. "You've made it more likely, not less."

"You're wasting your breath, commander," Lumiscant growled as she worked.

Garrus saw he was wasting his breath as well, so he did not press the point. "I don't believe I can get cleared for sharing the cipher."

"Then shut up and leave. We'll solve this on our own."

Shepard was surprised by the alert that flashed on her HUD, and the message from Nile: "Stand by for reinforcements."

She left Schreieder's team in charge of keeping a watchful eye on Vakarian's platoon and made her way to the reactor building, where upon reaching the gate she was met by a set of familiar faces:

" _Tovarich Shepard'yeva,_ " Zaryanova greeted her.

" _Aleksandra Andreyevna,_ " Shepard saluted, then noticed her grim disposition. Tracer was also there, equally upset, alongside Mercy, Genji, the slender D-Va next to the huge bulk of her hardsuit, and the reason for their discomfort — a leather-clad man wearing a skull-like mask. The post-combat relief evaporated at once.

"What's he doing here?"

Reaper said nothing, merely staring back coldly at her instead. Then three more troops joined them.

"Commander Shepard?" a black-skinned man asked. He was fully outfitted in a featureless matte-black armor, except for the small N7 logo on his breastplate.

"Sir," she saluted. _He can't be…_

"David Anderson. My partners are Kathleen Sanders and Brian Ryder. We have new orders for you."

At once she boxed her amazement and displeasure into a compartment and refocused, "I'm listening, sir."

"We understand you have been informed already about the nature of these cyborg forces battling both the Turians and us."

She shifted her weight from one leg to the other in discomfort. "If we're going to believe what this Vakarian said, sir, then yes."

"Until we make our own investigations, we don't have much of a choice in the matter. Part of what we're going to do involves that, but our primary mission is a rescue. Contact with a fellow N7 team was lost as they tried to infiltrate the mining compound. I've asked Overwatch to assist in the extraction."

It was extremely hard for her not to blink. Reaper coolly glaring in amusement at her probably helped. She struggled to control her hatred and bottled the impulse to ask why to bring the murderer along, then inquired instead, "Is there anything else I need to know, sir?"

Anderson waved everyone beyond hearing range except for Zaryanova. "This alien squad is coming with us. We have agreed to a ceasefire with the Citadel forces while the terms of an armistice are negotiated. They have their own worries — the Turians have lost a lot of people, with many still MIA."

"Are you sure that is their only concern?" Zarya muttered darkly.

The N7 bowed his head, showing he shared her mindset. "They're every bit as interested as we are in finding out as much as they can about this cyborg menace, if only because of the quality of their weapons. And they'll want to keep us in the dark about whatever they find, so we must get to the bottom of this before they do."

Aaliyah acknowledged him with a nod. "Alright, sir. What do you need me to do? Do we need to bring someone else with us?"

"If I may," Zaryanova replied politely, "I suggest we bring Kaname and Lumiscant with us. That will round out my team."

At once, Shepard radioed the order for the woman and the omnic to join them. "I suppose I am to be the liaison with this Vakarian?"

"That is correct. You have already set up some sort of rapport with the Turians. Your quick thinking is to be commended, LC."

"Begging your pardon, sir, being mutilated into that shape is a fate I would not wish upon anyone."

"Me neither," Anderson agreed, "but don't let that get in the way of your work. I don't have to tell you how fragile or dangerous the situation is."

 _So, no simple rescue mission. Of course not. And if we find ourselves up to our necks in Turian cyborgs…_ Suddenly the perspective of having Reaper around changed from borderline intolerable to barely tolerable. Supposing the madman could be counted not to shoot them.

"Copy that loud and clear, sir. If you'll excuse me I need to sort things out with my team."

"You do that, then report back here."

* * *

Pokhara, despite being a remote, barren and inhospitable world, had been settled because of the rich deposits the main mining complex had been built around. Initially an open-cut operation, now the complex was one giant borehole almost half a kilometer across, and countless galleries had been excavated into its walls.

Now the place was a smoking ruin. No recognizable machinery was left. It had been blown to pieces, and their wrecks had been subjected to barrage after barrage until there was nothing left of them other than twisted metal. Cyborg husks littered the terrain around the borehole, and the bottom was black and blue with charred metal and Turian blood.

"Just how many died here?" Shepard whispered in horror.

"Too many," Vakarian replied darkly. "Just because of an overzealous officer."

Now both Alliance and Citadel troops manned the perimeter, the former heavily outnumbering the latter. Rigid discipline was enforced on the ranks by either side, nobody wanting to risk the precarious ceasefire being rent asunder by any mistakes.

Both platoons stood ready, coolly eyeing each other as last-minute preparations were made. Shepard caught sight of Mercy approaching her with an Asari in tow:

"Commander, meet Valena Danaan. You have come across her before."

Aaliyah studied the blue-skinned face warily, not placing her, then her memory joined the dots. She blinked in surprise, wondering what she would do now that she was back on her feet, but before she could say anything the Asari anticipated her:

"Calm down, I'm not about to reignite the fighting because of our first encounter."

Instantly Shepard took a liking to her. "That's some of the most judicious talk I've heard since I made planetfall. If it's true."

"Why lie? Nobody stands to gain anything from further bloodshed. In fact, I've come to join you in your mission."

She double-took at those words, then noted lowly, "I assume you're well aware of the risks. Yours was no simple flesh wound."

"And that's why you need me. You need not fear us, officer. De'Alia Vasir fought alongside you and she did not turn on you either."

"That won't stop you from betraying us later." The discussion was pointless, so she cut it short right there: "Alright, if you're coming with us, I suppose you can join Vakarian's platoon."

"You misunderstand me. I'm not going as part of my Turian comrade's force, I'm going with you."

Immediately Shepard glanced at Anderson and his fellow N7 commandos, who were all busy discussing preparations with other officers while still in full view of the conversation: nobody raised an eyebrow about it. Neither did any of the Overwatch elite. Reaper, though, was staring intently at her.

That glare was what compelled Shepard to accept:

"We are a tight unit, miss Danaan, and everyone here is expected to fulfill a role. Still, I've seen what you can do, so I won't refuse having you around where we're going."

A few minutes later, a company of Turian troops escorted them all the way down to one of the lowest galleries. It had been sealed in the past with the circular hatch-like doors typically used on mines in colonies all over Alliance space, but there was no trace of the hatch now; it had been blown away — from the inside.

"This is as far as we go," the company commander told Garrus. "Good luck to you."

"Thanks."

Given the narrow confines, it was obvious that the score of troopers could not march next to each other. Vakarian and his troops solved the conundrum by marching ahead without uttering a single word; Anderson and the N7 team, alongside Reaper, Shepard, and their Asari guest, comprised the middle ranks, and Zaryanova and the Overwatch squad covered their rear.

Aaliyah held herself tightly in control. Having to work alongside the murderer that had killed her whole squad grated her immensely, but it was not the moment to dwell on that.

Signs of the bitter fighting that had raged on the tunnels were everywhere, with walls blackened by explosions and pockmarked with holes all over. There were, however, no corpses at all, but many blue blood stains. Despite the cool antipathy between Alliance and Citadel troopers, the former could not stop themselves from reconstructing the battle on their minds and feeling horrified — all except for Lumiscant and Reaper.

"When did this start?" Anderson asked quietly.

Vakarian was slow to answer. "Four standard days ago."

As they went deeper into the mines, sparse glowing blue dots started to appear on the stone. Shepard expected those to grow into veins, but she was noticeably surprised when out of nowhere they came upon a solid chunk of pure element zero embedded on the wall. The Turians also noticed this and they talked among themselves for a few seconds:

"This is not normal, officer," their Asari 'guest' translated their words into English for her benefit before her onboard AI could. "Some forms of refined eezo look like this."

"There's something buried here," the Turian leader muttered. "This is no mere mine."

Shepard wanted to ask, _Why are there no bodies here?_ The answer was obvious and terrifying.

It took her some instants to realize Danaan had not used her mother tongue: _she speaks English? How come?_

Eventually, they came upon a new installation, something unlike anything any Alliance hardware; it seemed to have been a large zero-g blast door at some point, but it had been reduced to charred metal. Fighting in this hall had been fierce and desperate. Bloodstains were everywhere, and many small bits of metal were scattered on the ground.

"We had hoped to contain them here," Vakarian mused, anticipating their thoughts. "We had fortified this chamber."

Shepard expected to hear more, but the Turian was silent. Zaryanova then intervened:

"Then what happened?"

Garrus still could not bring himself to talk, so one of his subordinates spoke for him:

"A team had went in to rescue some people who got sealed off somewhere further underground. They came back to us turned into living bombs. Some remained here to buy time for the rest of us to retreat back to the surface."

Beyond the torn hinges of the hatch, the tunnel stretched on, dimly lit by solid chunks of eezo on the walls but no other lighting. Nothing moved.

Reaper ignored the dread that was stalking both platoons and simply strode on, twin submachine guns ready on his hands. Zaryanova followed him, spurred by the need to keep an eye on their enemy, and the rest of the Overwatch force went with them. Without a word, both forces switched positions and resumed their walk, but Vakarian joined Shepard and Anderson on the middle rank. Nobody spoke. Everyone was now on edge, senses very alert.

But no one expected the galleries, ever more abundant with eezo chunks, to suddenly and abruptly change from near perfect cylindric tunnels into a wide, cavernous gallery of purple metallic walls.

"This is not a mine," Hana Song spoke for the first time, unknowingly echoing Vakarian's earlier words, unease creeping into her voice. Nobody acknowledged her.

Even Reaper himself had stopped. Shepard could only see the black hood as he was absolutely still, his back turned to her.

Then slowly he raised his guns and started walking again. Making almost no noise at all this time.

Both the Overwatch team and Anderson's N7 commandos understood immediately and safeties went off. Vakarian noticed this and his troop followed suit, even though he could not see anything.

The gallery eventually led to a chasm so deep they could not see the end of it. A narrow ledge ran left and right. Everything here was solid metallic purple, both the floor and the walls, except for regularly occurring seams.

Vakarian pointed to the left. "That way."

"So you have trackers after all," Shepard noted.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't allowed to share it with you."

"Guess it doesn't matter now…" She looked around her. The place was impossibly huge and _quiet._ Still, there was something indefinable, vaguely resembling the shrill of an ultrasonic whistle in sensation, except that there was no sound at all.

Reaper started walking away, oblivious of the exchange, his motions now almost liquid. D-Va fell behind him with Tracer and Kaname the sniper at her back and the rest of the Overwatch team in tow.

Painfully aware of how vulnerable they were walking on a narrow ledge, they hugged the wall of the chasm until they reached another passageway. Some steps down the corridor and Anderson halted the march:

"Hold on."

Lumiscant stepped forward and crouched next to the discarded piece of armor. She picked it up: it was the left brace of a suit not different from Anderson's, the same area where the omni-tool was housed.

She plugged into the portable computer and after a few instants, she reported dryly, "It's been scrubbed. The homing beacon is still on, though. Whoever dumped it did so hours ago."

"Who did it?" Anderson demanded.

"Harper, sir," then the omnic froze. "We've got company."

Reaper grunted. "This is a trap."

Then, clear in the silence that seemed to swallow all sound, something reached them. It was the distant echo of a feminine wail.

Shepard's blood chilled and she felt all of her hairs standing on end. It was a horrible feeling, but one she was well acquainted with. Twice had she experienced something similar: on the Overwatch oubliette in the Cabeus crater, and on the cargo bay of the London.

But the person responsible for that was now standing one step ahead, back turned towards her, both submachine guns raised.

"I got it," Lumiscant announced, then reported in a rush, "Enemy forces are converging in our position. Range three-two-eight meters bearing two-one-one, and two-eight-one meters bearing zero-six-five." The omnic patched through the feed to the rest of the squad.

"We will get the rear," Vakarian said on the spot, putting aside his disquiet: if the synth was not lying and if she was tracking the signals on the implants of his erstwhile comrades, then she could crack their ciphers in a matter of hours.

"Understood," Anderson acknowledged him.

He did not need to impart orders: the Overwatch elite was already ready and his fellow commandos needed no preparation. The Turian troops retreated back to the passageway entrance by the chasm and took defensive positions there.

"I'll scout ahead," Tracer volunteered, and darted away into the darkness before he could say anything.

"If that girl was a man, he'd have a serious pair," one of the N7 commandos admired her.

 _We need all the help we can get, lost in this goddamned maze,_ Shepard thought bitterly, then instantly boxed that thought away. Being fatalistic now was a luxury she could not afford.

They waited like coiled springs ready to burst at the sight of the enemy. Hana Song kept her eyes on the feed from Tracer's omni-tool as she raced through the labyrinthine passageways. Genji Shimada had unsheathed his tanto knife and was wielding it backward, his grip completely still, the color accents on his black armor helping him blend in with the purple metallic walls. Zarya's weapon hummed, pointed forward and upwards to provide indirect fire, its wielder steady and relaxed, confident in her skills after having fought numberless battles in close quarters. Of the Overwatch elite, Anika Ziegler was the most unsettled, her golden wings trembling slightly with each breath and the heavy Caduceus blaster quivering in her hands. Kaname, the sniper, had never shifted from the cold, professional persona Shepard had known during their battle for the Tokamak reactor, and had her right eye on the scope of her canister rifle, multiple nanite grenades hanging from webbing on her chest.

Lumiscant was fidgety, keeping eye on the clusters of red icons that were inching closer by the second. Reaper froze still again, both guns raised, and Shepard's eyes were on her enemy, her intuition trusting his uncanny senses more than her reason…

Then some more icons appeared out of nowhere, and the omnic yelled, "TURIANS! THEY'RE ON YOU!"

It was too late. Like unholy spiders, cyborgs were climbing the chasm. A storm of gunfire erupted as Vakarian's troop tried to smite the abominations, but these had no interest in fighting, only in reaching the knot of Turian troopers, and Garrus realized this with only enough time to retreat to safety before—

—a coruscating sphere of darkness and purple energy trapped the cyborg horrors before they detonated. The explosions ripped through the Turian squad, but they held their ground. Anderson noticed this, turned to squint down the dark tunnel, and as he failed to see anything coming he ordered:

"We'll help them out! You guard this flank!"

" _Tak tochna, tovarich komandir,_ " Zarya acknowledged him, her knuckles white within the heavy gauntlets of her powered armor.

"I see them! I see—"

They heard Lena's voice before it was cut short by a feminine scream unlike anything they had ever heard before. It was so high-pitched it stung the eardrums, but it was no lament. Instead, it was a malevolent shrill, a cry aimed like a weapon right at the heart of their resolve.

Then there was another scream:

"TRACER!" Anika exclaimed in fear.

Nobody said anything. Everyone knew there was nothing they could do for her, and besides, the time-jumper was resourceful and impossible to corner or pin down. They had to trust she could make it to safety.

Reaper did not wait. He strode forward into the darkness, guns raised, and melted away in smoke — almost right at the same moment a cluster of red and blue lights turned round a corner and ran towards them.

Kaname loosed a round automatically, the noise of D-Va's chainguns drowning her shot but not her warning: "HOSTILES!"

Lumiscant fired two hardlight blasts and tossed a small sphere down the hallway that became a giant turquoise ball running through literally everything on its way. Several of the cyborgs erupted in showers of sparks and dark blue sprays. Shepard ran to the front and deployed her squad-shield as the things detonated explosively, the shockwave almost overwhelming her defense. A purple protective bubble enveloped her, and it was a good thing because a fusillade broke through her shield, peppering D-Va's mech but inflicting no real damage.

Hana ceased fire and deployed her point defense, giving them a few precious seconds to marshal a counterattack which Zarya did not waste. Augmented by Anika's Caduceus staff, she unleashed one plasma bomb after another, wreaking havoc on the cyborgs as Genji dashed ahead. He deflected incoming fire back to the enemy and cut a bloody blue swathe through the staggered attackers with precise sword slashes—

There was a blinding burst of light.

Then, out of nowhere, a tall, blue silhouette blinked into existence among the cyborg husks. It… _it_ … had apparently been an Asari once… like the cyborgs had been Turians in turn… but now it was a ghastly perversion of the blue aliens, stripped of all armor and cloth, biomechanical grafts lining its emaciated shape… terrible foot-long talons where each of the nails would be…

Shepard and Danaan went pale simultaneously at the horrific sight, and the former tried to yell a warning—

The thing hunched forward, arms spread wide, and screamed. Pain exploded in Aaliyah's head, and she could do nothing but reflexively trying to shield her ringing ears to no avail. Around her and further behind them, the Overwatch crew and Anderson's commandos were equally stunned, except for Lumiscant—

"SHUT UP!" D-Va raged as she literally stepped on the gas pedal and her hardsuit rocket-blasted forward, wading right into the husks and smashing onto the wailing horror—

But then, after a series of bright flashes, and the horror was no longer there, and then icons and alerts started to flash all over D-Va's HUD telling her that something was eating through the upper rear armor of her mech. She pivoted in place to find again the ghoulish figure, its clawed hands ablaze with blue fire and raised as if about to hurl something at her; she raised her point-defense system but the toroid simply ignored it, and the yellow alerts turned red as her right gun pod was sliced off clean.

" _RYUJIN NO KEN WO KURAE!"_ But now the monster was no longer screaming, which meant that D-Va's comrades were coming back to their senses, and the closest one was Genji. His sword went right through the horror's gut; a flick of the wrist, and then the blade ripped all the way out through the belly. Glowing blue ichors spurted out—

"GENJI!" Zarya screamed and watched in horror as the thing blinked around in the same fashion Tracer usually did and neck lifted the ninja. A cruel glare and then the large talons impaled him through the chest. With a dismissive and deceptively powerful flick of its arm, the monster tossed him away. Genji crashed noisily against the wall without so much as a painful grunt.

At once, Kaname tossed a nanite grenade that went off on top of the badly mauled Genji, then she brought her rifle to bear and fired. The large syringe-like canister dart hit the monster squarely on the chest. The thing waved its head around, briefly disoriented, then glared at the dart lodged in its flesh—

And then a submachine gun barrel was jammed through the monster's right eye socket.

"Die."

A brief buzzsaw-like sound and a splatter of ichors and brain matter stained the floor. Then Reaper put his other gun underneath the chin of the monster.

"Die."

Another sickening splash. Then the guns were pointed at the arms.

"Die."

Short bursts tore the arms off. Then Reaper became a cloud of living death and he enveloped the monster and its minions as he screamed his murderous mantra: "Die, DIE, DIE!"

The carcass of the banshee-like monster messily hit the ground. The cyborgs crumpled unceremoniously on the floor. Reaper wasted no time making sure they were truly dead and simply blew their heads off—

And then there was another stroboscopic cadence of blinding lights, and again there was the shrill screaming. Not even Reaper was immune to the near-supersonic wail of the monster that had appeared right next to him.

Out of reflex, he turned again into a cloud of smoke, but a pulsing black orb trapped him even in that form before he could escape. Blue fire blazed in the gaunt monster's hand as it readied its attack—

And then it was frozen into place. Danaan yelled, eyes clamped shut in exertion, "HURRY! I can't keep it in stasis for long!"

Shepard reached for Lumiscant, who was unaffected by the screaming. They both raced forward, taking care to stay clear of the pull of the black hole-like orb; Aaliyah primed two grenades and lodged them between the talons of each hand while the omnic deployed small sentry turrets around it. Using their hardlight projectors together, they wrested Reaper's smoky form away from the orb's pull and retreated to safety behind the bulk of D-Va's hardsuit, then screamed to Danaan:

"NOW!"

In quick succession, the Asari released her supernatural hold on the monster, and both grenades went off. The monster screamed in pain and rage as the sentry turrets fired on it—

Then a thin silhouette popped right next to it: "Time's up for you, you _cunt._ "

The bloodied and bruised Tracer popped away to safety, then her pulse bomb detonated. The monster became a series of ugly stains on the walls.

Silence followed. Turians and humans alike groped back to their senses and tried to account for their wounded.

Slowly and ungainly, Reaper stood up, turned around, and found what he was looking for. Shepard and the leather-clad assassin squared off.

"Thanks."

The voice had been quiet, without any of its usual hostility.

Aaliyah felt her temples swell and she turned aside. "I didn't do it for you," she muttered.

Anika, oblivious to the exchange, was on top of Genji. The ninja was out cold.

Tracer limped up to her. "How is he?"

"If we get him quickly out of here he'll live," Mercy answered through gritted teeth. "No tissue damage, but his life support system is wrecked."

"If it's mechanical damage I can help him," Lumiscant volunteered. "Maybe you'd want to look after Tracer and… well, him, doc."

Anika nodded and turned her attention to Tracer. " _Mein Gott,_ what got you?"

Lena's right arm was on a makeshift sling improvised out of her customary flight jacket. There was a clean hole on her right thigh she had crudely patched up with medi-gel and bandages. A multitude of small bruises and cuts covered her all over.

Tracer's smirk turned into a painful grimace. "You can dodge only so much."

Mercy grunted in agreement and undid the blood-soaked bandages. "It got hairy here."

Lena winced as Anika worked on her wound. "It also got hairy there."

"No doubting that."

Anderson slowly approached them, Garrus in tow. His eyes quickly scanned everything, including the casualties and the fallen enemies. He approached Shepard and Zaryanova, both equally ashen and standing next to Lumiscant and the shell-shocked Danaan: "Good to see you made it."

"It was no walk in the park," Shepard grunted. "How was it over there, sir?"

"We had some casualties," Garrus answered. "We have to send them back to the surface. They won't live long otherwise."

"You fared better than us, I see, in spite of…" Anderson's words trailed off as he laid eyes on the carcasses of the blue-skinned horrors. His eyes jumped between them and the traumatized Asari.

"We never came across those… apparently, that's what they do to any Asari they get their hands on," the Turian speculated.

"What's 'they', Vakarian?" Zaryanova demanded tiredly, still numb. She could not shake from her mind the vivid specter of the horror impaling Genji.

A shrug. "I haven't seen what it is. Eventually we'll find it down here."

"Will he live?" Anderson was asking Lumiscant as she worked on the unconscious Genji.

"Without help, he won't make it past today," was the cold answer. "I'm doing what I can, but without the right parts I can't fix him up."

A Turian soldier approached Garrus: "We'll have to find another way up, sir. The tunnel is gone."

Shepard stared at the trooper. "What?"

Moments later, they were on the edge of the chasm again. Where the passageway had once been, there was now a solid wall of purple metal without so much as a seam to mark a moving wall.

"Just great," she swore.

"Lumiscant?" Hana asked the omnic. She did not like her situation in the least. With a gun pod missing, she was reduced to barely being a bulky and inefficient fire support unit.

"Nothing around, but don't trust me," she warned. "Last time the bunch that got the jump on the Turians appeared almost right on top of them."

"We can't afford splitting up," Garrus mused.

"We cannot," Anderson agreed. "Can you repair D-Va's suit?" he asked of the omnic engineer.

"I can, but it'll take time," the synth replied flatly. She needed not clarifying that time was in short supply for some of them.

"Then we'll have to continue with what we've got. We will take the lead, as we've taken less casualties. Song, you and Ziegler go on the rear with Vakarian's platoon and cover our wounded. Zaryanova, Shepard and Reaper on point. We'll follow you along with Lumiscant and Kaname."

Tracer nodded reluctantly at that. The 'wounded' included her. Medi-gel and Mercy's magic staff or not, her stiff leg meant she could not dodge and jump around. But that did not mean liking to depend on Reaper to make it out of that maze. She exchanged glances with Aaliyah: _beware of this chap._

It did not take long for them to find Lena's handiwork: over a score of shot-up cyborgs and the wreck of one of those horrific siege units. One of the walls bore a long scorch mark where the thing had apparently hunted after her with its beam weapon.

"What happened here?" Garrus asked.

Shepard made a vague gesture at the limping Oxton, who just shrugged.

The Turian was amazed. "You took on all of them just by yourself…"

"It wasn't easy… I had to really work at it." She pointed at her wound. "I didn't get away scot-free either."

They were following Lumiscant's indications, following passageways that twisted, turned and sometimes retraced its steps. Shepard wanted to ask what it was that they were after, but in all likelihood the beacon on the omni-tool they had found was linked to those on the armors of Harper's fellow team members and they were trying to home in on that. She allowed herself no further speculation: being on point meant that she would be the first to die if they failed to spot the enemy.

At one moment, though, Reaper stopped cold.

"What?" Zaryanova asked dryly.

"We've been here before." The masked assassin turned around in place. The passageway was completely ordinary, except for a few seams here and there on the purple metal. After a complete turn he stopped, stared intently at the wall before him. Without warning, he turned into smoke and vanished.

Then they heard his voice on the radio. "Reaper here."

Lumiscant demanded, "Where are you?"

There was no response. Then the wall section on their right slid upwards without a noise. Reaper was on the other side.

"This is a shifting maze."

Anderson was dumbstruck. "How did you get that open?"

The assassin started walking down the newly opened tunnel. "Too long. Let's get this done and get out of here."

Garrus was speechless. Shepard noticed that:

"Ask about him at your peril," she warned him quietly, and followed after her enemy.

Two things became immediately apparent: first, _something_ had been herding them down those passageways that apparently led nowhere, and second, they were not meant to ever set foot on that particular corridor. The motif here was different: the walls were brownish in tint, and seemed to be covered with a resinous material rough to the touch.

After some time they reached a wide chamber. Faceted containers lined the walls. Many were dark and silent, but several were powered and shone with bluish light.

"They're large enough to hold people," Vakarian said, approaching one on a hunch, one he was wishing to be wrong about. The containers were translucid but not to the point of being able to see what was going on within.

Reaper approached another of the capsules. He stretched his neck forward in a fashion that Shepard's unconscious mind equated with that of a predator smelling the wind for prey — and that caused her to recoil in shock when her conscious self realized it.

"What's… what is it, officer?" Danaan asked in worry. Shepard was startled and tried to cover her lapse, but it was too late: "There's something… someone alive in there, is it?"

The masked assassin touched the crystal briefly then pulled away.

Aaliyah did not look into the Asari's questioning eyes. "Do you want to know?"

"We don't have the time to find out," Lumiscant alerted them, then she patched through her data to the rest of the squad: "This place will get lively in minutes if we stay here."

Anderson looked for the beacon on his HUD: some fifty-three meters to the northwest of their position. "We don't leave until we complete our mission. Safeties off!"

"This will slow them down," the omnic engineer said, then set up some small sentry turrets on the walls and the roof, concealing them in a way that it would be impossible for any pursuers to see them until they had gone right past them. She followed up by spraying a near-invisible layer of film-like material on the ground a few steps ahead of the turrets. "Done. Let's go."

They continued down the hallway into another chamber not too dissimilar from the previous one, except for a series of contraptions resembling tall metal stakes on tripods. They all were soaked in blue blood.

Except for one.

Danaan laid her eyes on the single impaled Asari, and her face contorted in terror. Before anyone could stop her, she levitated herself upwards and, as delicately as circumstances allowed, wrenched the victim free. At once the stake telescoped down and shrunk in size until it became a small, broad spike.

Mercy thought she had already seen enough horrors down here to be inured to more, but she was wrong. It took quite an effort to set that aside and approach the terror-stricken Asari and the helpless victim that was bleeding to death with no possible recourse on her arms. As she gazed on that tortured and agonized face, Anika realized she would not sleep well for weeks if she made it out of here alive. The eyes had been torn out. Metal pieces had burst through the skin as if they had grown from within. The poor woman was gulping out like a fish out of water, trying to say something but completely failing at doing so.

Despite the urgency of the moment, nobody dared to interrupt Danaan as she soothed the woman in her arms. Then she laid her softly on the ground, stood up slowly with tears of rage flowing down her serene face, and she clenched her left fist until it became ablaze with a blue flame, knuckles chalk-white:

"May the Goddess grant you in death the peace that was robbed from you in life."

She smashed downwards. There was a sickening _crunch_. The woman's limbs tensed for an instant, then relaxed forever.

Mercy gave her two whole seconds, as much time as she dared given their situation, before softly touching her shoulder and whispering, equally softly, "I'm sorry. We have to go."

Danaan nodded and started walking without a sound. Her face was an expressionless mask, but tears kept rolling, and her fists were still clenched white.

They continued at a brisk pace, turned around a corner, then a loud beeping was clearly heard in the darkness. Immediately Shepard realized what it was:

"IED!"

She raced towards the sound and deployed her squad-shield with barely a split-second to go before the explosive trap detonated. The blast was powerful enough to actually push her back several steps, but somehow she remained standing. A few coughs helped her voice work:

"Is… is everyone okay?"

A chorus of acknowledgments followed. "Good eye, LC," one of the N7s approved.

"Textbook, sir," she merely replied, which earned her a nod. Building improvised explosive devices to secure a hideout while waiting for extraction was one of the many topics on the ICT curricula. "They must be close by."

"There." In the darkness, a dim yellow light blinked in sequence. Anderson pulled out his flashlight and blinked back. Then, some more lights —headlamps and similar gear— turned on, and a single man approached. The left brace of his armor was missing.

"Excuse me, sir, I must have bungled my… oh. No, I didn't bungle anything." The man's voice changed after spotting Garrus and his team. His eyes flickered very briefly when he recognized the skull-like motif of Reaper's mask.

Anderson nodded, but procedures came first. "Identify and authenticate."

"Commander John T. Harper, attached to the Pokhara Expeditionary Force as part of 3rd Recon, serial number three-two-one-oh-four-nine-niner-oh. My authentication code is CHRONOS."

One of Anderson's commandos checked the information and sent him a silent 'OK' over the squad intranet. Again, the N7 leader nodded, and replied, "The response is BISHOP."

Harper relaxed slightly. He eyed Vakarian, who glared back guardedly, and asked Anderson, "When did we agree to the ceasefire?"

"Before deploying planetside."

"Good." He bowed his head in agreement, then approached Garrus. "Down here we couldn't afford to shoot each other. Maybe you can help the guys that teamed up with us."

Vakarian nodded, having pieced together that part already. The signal of the beacon his own team was tracking emanated from these chambers so it could only mean one thing.

"Kandros," he ordered quietly.

His team medic nodded and, escorted by two men, joined him as he approached the knot of humans clustered around the four forms lying on the floor.

A quick glance at the first two and the Turian shook her head slowly. When she approached the third one, her face twisted in a way reminiscent of a brow knotting. "He's alive. Prepare him for transportation."

"Yes, ma'am," one of her aides acknowledged her.

One of the humans they had just met approached Kandros: "Please excuse us… we tried our best to save the others, following this fellow's instructions. Guess it wasn't good enough."

She was checking the fourth and last one. "I can tell. You did save her, so your efforts weren't wasted."

The human — apparently a female, given the bulges on the breastplate — deflated in a sigh. "Thanks, ma'am."

Garrus approached and noticed who had survived. His eyes flashed with surprise and he tried to conceal it, but Shepard was looking at him.

"Someone special, I gather," she ventured.

Vakarian nodded. Trying to hide it now was pointless. "If someone could survive this long down here, it was Saren Arterius. He's some of the best there is."

Aaliyah caught sight of Reaper; the masked assassin was apparently listening with well-guarded interest. This once, she had to agree with her enemy:

"I'm surprised you actually tell us about him in detail."

"You would know of him eventually."

A sharp echo came from down the hallway they had traversed minutes ago.

"They're here," Lumiscant warned quietly.

"Stand to!" Garrus ordered, then turned to Anderson, "Take my wounded teammates and get them out of here. We'll delay them."

"If we lose all of you here, we'll never make it out," the N7 argued, then as he saw Vakarian was not persuaded, he changed his tack: "I know you Turians will take one for the team if you deem it necessary. I don't question your courage, and your commitment to the mission is exemplary, but this time the way out is to run together."

Urged by the sounds of the approaching enemy, Garrus had little time to think. His first impulse was to urge Anderson to leave them, but then they heard again that malevolent feminine wail:

"Here they come!" one of his troopers warned.

"Make every shot count!" he barked harshly in reply, then he turned to Anderson: "We'll get the rear! Go!"

Then the first cyborgs turned around the corner, and almost immediately opened up in a storm of gunfire — and right afterward, after a series of blinding stroboscopic light pulses, one of the emaciated blue horrors appeared:

"SCREAMER!"

"Not this time." In a single fluid motion, Garrus raised his heavy long rifle and loosed a single shot. The round pierced all the way through the head of the monster, leaving a tiny hole on the forehead and making a bloody mess of the rest of the skull. The abomination gurgled hideously, then slowly toppled forward and landed flat on its face. With the same murderous precision, the Turian switched from target to target, dropping three enemies in quick succession until a burst forced him to take cover amidst the large cylinders by the walls. One of his subordinates, however, opened up from another angle, again inflicting a toll on their pursuers, and in this fashion they managed to keep the enemy busy on one or two of them at a time. They were superbly organized; each trooper defaulted to specific arcs of fire that overlapped with those of other troopers, and their firing patterns ensured they never targeted any foe twice by mistake.

Anderson and his fellow commandos had used the shock caused by Vakarian's quick disposition of the main visible threat to charge forward. The N7 leader was a legend for a reason, a veteran of many rodeos who had earned his spurs as an assault specialist; as such, he excelled in disrupting formations, his business being to crash into the enemy and dish out explosive and ballistic death all around him. He had worked in tandem with Sanders and Ryder for years now, and they knew his fighting patterns down to the letter. Helped by the deadly and accurate fire support from the Turians, it took them less than twenty seconds to slice through half the enemy like a hot knife through butter, and managed to throw the remainder into a disordered and chaotic retreat before they themselves were forced to take cover.

"This lull won't last long," the N7 veteran said huskily. "Lumiscant and Reaper, find us a way out of here!"

"We have heavies coming at us," the omnic warned.

The assassin acknowledged neither Anderson nor the omnic. He walked up to Tracer instead:

"Hand over your bombs."

Virtually the whole Overwatch squad had the same thought at the same time: _sure, and then you have a perfect chance to blow us up right here._ But then again, Reaper had shown he had no need for explosives to kill people.

Reluctantly Tracer handed him her two remaining charges. As he reached for them, she held them briefly: "Careful with that."

Reaper snatched the explosives with contempt, and sneered, "I'll just save again your lame asses with them. No sweat." Then he walked away.

Oxton gritted her teeth, and her eyes blazed angrily, but she said nothing. She was disabled, entirely at the mercy of her enemy; the situation was humiliating, but she had no choice other than rolling with it.

The assassin stormed off and simply strode forward past Anderson's team, caring nothing at all for the incoming enemy fire as he became a smoky specter and ignored it. Garrus put aside the concerns such a sight elicited — it looked human, spoke like a human, and wielded guns like a human, but almost definitely that _thing_ was _not_ human and certainly did _not_ resemble anything he had ever heard of — and seized the distraction Reaper had created to snipe at another cyborg. His troop and the human soldiers wasted little time as well.

"Press forward!" Anderson ordered.

They started pushing, slowly at the beginning, but their pace quickened as the enemy learned Reaper was impervious to gunfire — whatever drove them, it was smart enough to realize that throwing cyborgs at him would only get them wrecked.

"We're almost there," Lumiscant encouraged them as the chasm was again visible down the end of the tunnel, then her voice changed. "The enemy is coming in in force behind us! Company strength, with multiple heavies."

Reaper said nothing but retraced his steps, readying one of Tracer's pulse bombs, and vanished down the hallway.

The N7 leader ordered, "Get moving! Overwatch team, make sure the way out is clear! Shepard, on me!"

Zarya wasted no time. She bubbled up and charged down the ledge, expecting to be fired upon at any moment but nothing happened. She reached the hallway on the other side of the chasm and yelled an alert over the radio:

"Clear!"

The wounded, escorted by Kandros and Ziegler, came next along with Kaname the sniper, who took position by the hallway threshold and waited for Anderson's team and the Turians to follow—

—and one of the blue-skinned screamers appeared out of nowhere amidst blinding pulses of light, floating in the midst of the chasm. Danaan was ready for this—

—but another singularity appeared right next to it, not hers. Next to her, Lumiscant fired multiple hardlight blasts off her weapon, and she realized the humans probably had their own means of generating such phenomena despite their lack of biotics because the omnic's attacks were impeccably timed, shredding the emaciated abomination to pieces before it could react.

Back in the tunnel, the echo of a powerful detonation reached them, and Anderson yelled, "That's our signal, let's go!"

D-Va had remained behind. Her damaged hardsuit was of limited use since she could not project her point defense grid with just one gun pod, but it would have another use now. She walked to the hallway entrance and waited by the edge of the chasm until they had all raced to safety, then she herself followed. As she was the last one remaining, she turned around, expecting the black cowled silhouette of their nemesis to appear, but instead of him, what she spotted were the blue and red lights hinting of more approaching enemies, so she rocket-blasted across the chasm, landing at the other side just at the moment the enemy started to fire upon her, and urged her fellows and Turians alike: "Get moving!"

They ran down the hallway until they reached the tunnels dug in the bedrock again. All the while, they were being chased by a persistent enemy that nonetheless was never in enough numbers to pierce through Shepard's shield. Then, Hana grinned to herself:

"Let's see how they manage now." A command, then red warning lights started blinking all over her HUD. She triggered the ejection system: "Nerf THIS!"

"FIRE IN THE HOLE! MOVE! MOVE!" Anderson yelled. D-Va raced over to them. Zaryanova and Shepard covered their retreat. The latter had her squad-shield deployed, and the former protected Song from enemy fire with a projected particle barrier. The moment the Korean pilot had cleared the shield, Aaliyah and the Russian disengaged, retreated around the corner, and dashed away in a dead run after the rest of the team.

The explosion tossed Shepard away and knocked Zarya prone. Hundreds of tons of rock crashed down behind them, sealing the passageway. The Russian helped the dazed Aaliyah stand up, and they kept racing forward and upward, the aftershocks of the avalanche creating cracks in the walls and the low ceiling above them.

Only when they reached the final checkpoint where the Turians had desperately fought to hold the cyborgs back a few days earlier did they stop.

"Where's… where's Reaper?" was Shepard's first question when she managed to catch her breath.

"Don't you fret, he'll turn up," Zarya muttered. "I've seen him survive worse than this."

Vakarian noticed the exchange. "I should know better than to ask, but what _is_ he?"

The deputy Overwatch commander shook her head. "Shepard here told you what you need to know about him."

Indeed, they came upon Reaper on a tunnel intersection as they made their way back to the surface. This time, the Overwatch troopers reluctantly accorded him a nod in thanks for his work which he returned with just a cold glance.

Shepard did not. They stared at each other for a long second, then she walked past him in silence.

* * *

 _Author's note:_ a heartfelt thank you to **BrokenLifeCycle** for proofreading and ideas.


	11. Citadel: Act I

Omega

The hangar door opened with a whine of gears begging for oil, just in time for the shuttle to race inside at breakneck speed and brake exactly on place with inhuman accuracy. Just as fast, the hangar door slid back into its closed position, concealing the craft from view.

Miranda Lawson observed from behind the thick glass of the observation deck, watching as the shuttle touched down softly. A score of heavily armed troopers were spread around that landing bay, backed up by four hardsuits, and an equal team had been tasked with guarding all passages leading to that obscure place, one of many such secret facilities on that dark twin of the Citadel.

She had hated the place ever since she had first set foot on it. On the decks way above her head, where the denizens dwelt, the air was warm, filthy and tinged with a mix of odours her acute senses had dissected into sulphur, hot metal and sweat from half a dozen different races. _Why am I supposed to do this here again?_

She knew the answer, of course. While there were tons of places on the Terminus worlds that were more discrete and out of the way, a few ships traversing such desolate locales would draw a lot more attention than just another shady shuttle entering a shady hangar for what undoubtedly was some sort of shady business, which was the norm for almost any sort of business conducted in Omega. Besides, even if humans were pariahs on Citadel space because of their omnic associates, here they were far from an unusual sight.

It rankled her judgment that the place was the default meeting location for the unofficial contacts between Alliance and Citadel officers: besides the usual criminals, mercenaries, smugglers and refugees, the station was crawling with agents belonging to almost every intelligence service worth its salt. Such people added an element of hazard to that operation, and she had been painstakingly thorough when planning to counter it — none of the troopers bore any sort of insignia, their weapons were the best a buyer could get from any of the black marketeers that openly plied their trade there, and the installation itself had housed a notorious ring of Batarian slavers before intermediaries had 'negotiated' their removal.

And damn if she did not _hate_ it there. Even if she knew better than to let her discomfort get in the way of her work, after each visit to Omega she had felt the need to seclude herself in a sauna for days. This situation was no exception.

The shuttle door slid open. A man clad in nondescript black powered armor came out. The troopers spread over the bay kept their weapons pointed at the shuttle as the worker mechs — not omnics, the ruler of Omega was not keen on having AIs on her station and she was feared enough for her ban to be enforced — unloaded the tank-like cylinder and maneuvered it into a standing position.

The man gestured curtly at the observation deck. Miranda nodded, turned around and left the room, followed by her quartet of guards, to walk down the flight of stairs and cross the doorway into the hangar bay proper.

Another man was already by the tank when she entered, tapping commands into his omni-tool and frowning as he scrolled down the readout from the instruments on the containment tank. Miranda addressed him:

"So?"

The man did not turn to face her. "Let us hope they did things right back then."

"It's legit." It was a question, not a statement.

"It matches what we know about them."

Lawson glanced at the man in the black armor. He only uttered in a deep, hoarse voice:

"Open it."

This time, the medic did turn to Miranda. She nodded imperceptibly, then signaled to one of the armored troopers. At once, men and hardsuits alike raced to redeploy and reinforce the other team manning the security barriers on the corridors that led to that hangar.

Two minutes later, only the medical officer, the man in black armor and Lawson stood there, facing the cylinder emblazoned with the Talon crest.

In the silence, the man approached the antiquated keyboard-based control panel and started typing commands. A screen turned on, showing all things he had already read via his omni-tool — core temperature… pulse… brain activity…

At last, some yellow warning lights turned on, and alerts flashed on the screen. The curved, shielded metal doors slowly split apart, to reveal the contents of the tank: a woman, her skin blue and pale, hair black and very long.

The medic was briefly taken by the raw appeal of those curves, then he digited another command. Ducts on the base of the tank drained away the liquids holding the woman in suspension. A jolt shook that body, and the thick crystal glass split in two and neatly slid out of the way.

The blue-skinned woman fell to her knees on the spot. The medic reached out to steady her — and immediately was slammed down by a hand reaching for his throat.

Then the pitiless yellow eyes went to Miranda first, and to the man in black armor next.

" _Qui sont-ils?"_ she asked coldly.

Reaper allowed himself a grim smile. It was the face of a predator meeting an equal.

"Your new employers."

* * *

Moon - Horizon Lunar Colony

The atmosphere on the main conference hall in the Citadel Embassy was barely one step above hostile. The Turian troopers on guard duty had no visible weapons other than some sidearms, but they all resembled coiled snakes: all they needed was a motive.

"Secretary Udina, welcome," the Turian ambassador greeted him with a courteousness that fooled no one present. "What brings you to us so unexpectedly?"

Donnel Udina was fuming with outrage. His sharp gestures and stony expression proclaimed it loudly: "Ambassador Sevocus, I am here to protest the continuous attempts of Citadel spies to steal our secrets."

The challenge was blunt as a fist to the face. The Asari representative recoiled and warned, "You should be careful when making such accusations, Secretary." Amaya Myrashi let her words linger before adding: "You cannot take them back."

Udina's face did not change a whit. He tapped instead his omni-tool a few times, and the device projected a hologram recording. The quality was not deserving of any prizes, but it was clear enough: it showed a squad of troopers storming a flat, catching the host and his Salarian guest completely unawares.

"Mister 'Jarrod Piks' is under arrest. We staged this meeting to compromise him without a shadow of a doubt. He has consistently attempted to bribe, cajole or extort some of our personnel into surrendering some of the delicate research they are involved in to him." Contemptuously he tossed a tablet computer into the hands of the guard nearest to Sevocus. "Now, would you like to go back on your warning, miss Myrashi?"

Sevocus' face did not change. "Mister Secretary, may I congratulate your security services for their efficiency. The Council condemns espionage and neither encourages nor sponsors such abhorrent activity on your space. But, if I may point out, mister Piks was accorded diplomatic immunity, as agreed under the terms of the Treaty of Pokhara."

"Diplomatic immunity does not imply condoning such blatant attempts at interfering with our research!" Udina raged. "Don't take us for dullards, mister Ambassador! For years on we have been on to mister Piks and other 'associates' working out of your embassy. All the time you have waxed about how 'abhorrent' those clandestine activities are, and promised the cooperation of the Council, yet all we have seen on your part are more of such acts!" He stared at Sevocus for several instants, before adding in an official voice: "Mister Piks will be held until the Council issues a formal apology and provides solid guarantees against this kind of activity reiterating."

Myrashi's face darkened. "So you will violate the sacred persona of a diplomat? This goes both ways, Secretary. What about miss Goyle's mission in the Citadel? Would you consider it ethical for us to bring her in for questioning regarding her associations in Council Space?"

"Do not liken ambassador Goyle's cultural rapprochement to your illicit activities!" Udina stormed. "Anita endeavors to heal the breach of trust you have consistently attempted to widen with blunders like these. You arrest her and you doom efforts on both sides to failure."

For two tense seconds, Udina and the Citadel envoys measured each other. The Salarian representative, one Forlall Bazeni, had not uttered a single word, his bulgy eyes fixated all the while on Udina instead.

"I will transmit your demands to the Council for consideration. Have a good day, mister Secretary." Haughtily, the Turian ambassador turned on his heel and left the hall. Bazeni followed him without comment. The most distraught of the three was Myrashi, who hesitated for a split-second before walking after her fellow diplomats.

Udina took a deep breath, then also turned on his heel and made his way out of the embassy. He was immediately joined outside by a quartet of troopers.

David Anderson studied the stony face and ventured: "I take it that it did not go well."

The diplomat's scowl deepened. "Did you really expect any better? They threatened to retaliate against Ambassador Goyle in the Citadel." He was still angry, and it showed on his step as they walked to the tram station.

Zaryanova frowned. Deep lines were set in her slavic face now. The hair that she had used to dye pink was now iron-gray in color. But her powerful frame still had the strength of steel and her step was as spirited and vigorous as ever. Today, however, instead of the deep blue uniform usually worn by Starwatch personnel, she was dressed in ceremonial white and yellow. "It was among the possibilities."

"They won't dare. Goyle has a lot of prestige and is the official Ambassador for the Alliance. This Piks we got our hands on is a goon. It would be seen as a disproportionate response if they arrested her."

"But they will be putting a very close eye to her activities there. That may make our few positive relations on Citadel space uncomfortable."

"Bah! Let them look all that they want. There is nothing to find." And that was about as much as Udina dared to say this close to the Citadel embassy.

Except for the diplomat, who excused himself on grounds of being both busy and disruptive — not untrue at all, given who would attend the next meeting —, the underground tram took them to the oldest section of the colony, one that dated back to the days when the place was but a small research center.

It was a strange place for a memorial, but still, there it was. And, yet again that day, the sight of it took Aaliyah Shepard back. Retaking the colony from the sentient apes that had seized it after a bloody riot had been an equally bloody affair, one that only Winston, the Overwatch legend, had survived by escaping to Earth before it had taken place. It had been only reasonable, then, that the gorilla had found his final resting place on lunar soil.

For a memorial, it was spartan. Only two gravestones were set on the center of the circular hall: that of Winston's, and that of his surrogate father. In front of them, a single flame was lit, one that always burned.

Colonel Shepard's eyes were not on the gravestones, though. She was surveying instead the set of faces assembled. Most of the people assembled there were Starwatch operatives, to whom Winston was a hero on the level of legendary leaders of nations such as Charles de Gaulle.

A small group, however, was clad, like Zarya, in the yellow and white colors of Starwatch's parent organization. They were the last living remnant, people that had fought next to him half a century ago: Genji Shimada the cyborg ninja, the ever-youthful Lena Oxton, Tekhartha Zenyatta the Shambali leader, and the venerable John Morrison. Next to them, now dressed in the deep navy blue of Starwatch, was the next generation, chief among them Anika Ziegler and Layali Amari.

 _Has it been ten years already?_ The memory sprang to mind unbidden. News of Winston's passing had come during one of Starwatch's deployments on the Skyllian Verge. They had just concluded a lengthy operation against a well organized band of Batarian corsairs when they had been recalled back to Earth.

However long in the past it was, it still brought tears to the eyes of the Overwatch veterans. Tracer was far from her usual cheerful self. Her choice of outfit for the occasion was a tribute to her friend and savior, the flight jacket paired with the bright orange leggings. She had no goggles on, however. She could not keep them on with tears spilling out continuously.

The other signs of how much times had changed since the days of Overwatch walked in some ten-odd minutes after Shepard's own arrival. To the representatives from the Citadel Council, the occasion was a formality, but one they had been invited to every year, hoping they would learn more from humanity and their omnic allies. The initiative had been successful on an individual level, and time would tell if it would influence the Council's perceptions of humanity enough for the severe restrictions put into place for Alliance activities on their space to be eased.

The ceremony was not long. The presence of the people honoring those interred there was more than enough. A vice admiral gave an eulogy, commending Winston for his indefatigable spirit and his determination on his quest for peace and harmony, noting how he had been a bridge between different worlds — and also highlighting how necessary such people were in times when fear and mistrust plagued the relations between the Alliance and other cultures in the stars. It was, if anything, an elliptic jab at both the Citadel envoys present and the Alliance leadership for their inability to find common ground. That struck Shepard as odd, and actually had her focus on this Steven Hackett that had spoken so daringly.

After the ceremony was complete, the hundred-odd people assembled there were led to an adjacent hall for drinks. Shepard took some cider herself, and waited until the cadre of Overwatch veterans finished their private talk and spread out over the hall to approach Morrison.

She saluted: "Sir."

The elderly man appraised her approvingly and saluted back. "Hello, colonel. It's a pleasure to see you."

"Thank you, sir."

"You seem to have done well for yourself."

"I can't complain. We've got our hands full through and through, though."

Morrison snorted. "It's not like you just have Earth to keep an eye out for. Compared to you, we had it easy."

Shepard smiled. "Different challenges. You had to worry about Talon and some rogue omnics."

"Whereas you are in the forefront of a cold war being fought in two fronts." Morrison eyed the Asari ambassador. The alien woman was studying Zenyatta behind an expressionless face that nonetheless told him much.

"Well, mostly one. The other one is a bit beyond our purview, as you know."

Morrison shook his head. "I'm not as well informed as I used to be."

Which was, to a point, something he had decided himself, Shepard knew. "Has Zarya brought you up to speed, sir?"

A curt nod. "She did. Well, it's not as though we'd be seeing eye to eye with the Hegemony anytime soon."

Shepard returned the nod. "Push has not yet come to shove. I was hoping we'd never come to that point, but…"

"Sore egos'll do that to you."

"I would have hoped things at that level weren't handled personally."

"The Batarians are a funny bunch, colonel. Think early 21st Century North Korea."

It was, if anything, an accurate comparison. "Those madmen liked to make life miserable for their neighbors too." She glanced at the Turian ambassador. "What wouldn't I give to know which side will the Council fall on."

"You pays your money and you takes your chance. They have no love for neither of us."

"Batarians have no AIs. Nothing that we know of," she corrected herself. As they had renounced Citadel membership, they were no longer bound by their laws. "But getting to our current state of affairs took us the better part of a century."

"And we've coexisted with omnics for a generation now."

Shepard shook her head. "If only we could tell these politicians how scared we were ourselves. Aren't you astonished at how well things have turned out on that end, sir?"

Morrison grunted his agreement. "What do you think that says about us, colonel?"

A shrug. "Isn't it the fate of children to outstrip their parents?"

"Well, I don't see many omnics starting wars of conquest or making life horrible for their fellow citizens, whether organic or synthetic."

Shepard knew that as fact. Even those omnics that harbored separatist ideas were correct and measured in their dealings with humanity. If anything, whatever animosity there was against organics was directed against the Citadel Council for the massacre of Pokhara.

Morrison changed subjects: "Zarya told me there are no news on our common friend."

She had to suppress a chill. "No confirmed sightings. We've been hearing some disconnected rumblings about him possibly being on the Terminus worlds."

Another grunt. "He just had to get back at me before vanishing, had he."

That had been a nasty piece of business. Reaper himself had leaked out how he had saved the elite Overwatch ranks from total destruction during the First Contact War, twice at that. The resulting media firestorm had caused, among other things, for the agency to be subsumed into the N7 program, planting the seeds of Starwatch in the process — and Morrison's retirement.

Shepard replied in as neutral a voice as she could manage: "Those who remain know that was a load of bullshit, sir."

Surprisingly, Morrison half-smiled. "He did me a favor, actually. You're not supposed to be in the boonies on your seventies."

Aaliyah grinned sadly in turn. "You're not a good liar, sir."

A brief, bitter laugh, then he became serious again. "Something still itches about that."

A nod. "You don't buy that was his whole goal either."

"Swallow his pride to work next to his avowed enemies, even to save them?" A snort. "Of course not. He was after something else. But what?"

Shepard sipped her cider while her mind grappled with the question — albeit briefly. She had went over that topic so many times already without coming to anything resembling at least a satisfactory guess that it took her a split second to shrug. "Well, sir, given the story between the two of you, if you don't know, then nobody does."

The Starwatch officer paused her train of thought momentarily to gauge the atmosphere in the hall. It was definitely emotional, as a homage to such a hero as Winston was supposed to be, but also somewhat stiff. The Citadel envoys were not getting much in the way of friendly glances.

Morrison read her thoughts: "How would you rate this ceremony as a way to ease tensions, colonel?"

Another sip. "Not much of a success, sir. But then again, they aren't real big on humility."

The former Overwatch commander frowned. "They're the big kid in the schoolyard. That's the kind of behavior that goes with it."

 _And, like a school bully, they feel they're entitled to anything they want._ The Alliance had vociferously protested the espionage incident, as she had just heard from Udina, but the sad truth was that it was in no position to retaliate. There were virtually no commercial links between both sides. All intelligence operations on Citadel space had to be conducted by mercenaries and criminal elements operating there — none of which were exactly trustworthy. The only thing the Alliance could do was to increase its penetration of the Terminus systems, a policy that, right now, equated sowing seeds with painstaking care on unfriendly soil.

"I'd never have guessed they resemble us so much." Then, after a brief pause, she added: "What do you think that would happen, sir?"

Morrison did not need to ask for clarification. Dispassionately he replied: "It would be bloody. If they really were serious about it they'd win, but it would cost them. Greatly."

* * *

Omega

Miranda was staring at Wilson on the screen. The bald medical officer was interviewing the Talon assassin Reaper had brought into the fold. She had Widowmaker's file on her own tablet computer. Amélie Lacroix was a name that had struck fear into those who knew of her between the First and Second Omnic crisis; once a loving wife, the terrorist group had used her to get to her husband. That assassination had been one of the nails in the coffin for Overwatch, and the first of a long string of murders.

She could understand why she had been feared. The woman's eyes were unique, not just because of their yellowish tint. A normal person's eyes tended to jump slightly, to make minute adjustments, even if they were consistently looking at something or someone. Hers did not.

How Widowmaker was alive at all was a mystery. Her core temperature was way below that of a normal, healthy human. Initial tests showed hints of nanites on her body. Micromachines had come a long way since then, and they had been used to treat hypothermia, but never to _sustain_ someone in a hypothermic state. That was an avenue of research that showed promise.

On the screen, Wilson stood up from his chair and left the cell. A minute later he was entering Miranda's makeshift office.

"The subject is physically fit for duty," the medic started without preamble. "I advise to have her psychologically screened before assignment, however."

"Why is that?"

"According to… Reaper's report, this woman has been extensively conditioned. We have no information about the procedures followed, and no metrics to gauge how efficient that conditioning is now. Actually, I would recommend attempting to remove all such foreign programming before going forward with applying anything of our own."

"And if we cannot?"

A shrug. "If that can't be done, she's a liability. I wouldn't vouch for her adherence to orders. We could only deploy her alongside Reaper, if we can deploy her at all. She'd be most useful as a research subject."

 _Turn such an experienced sniper into a Guinea pig?_ She could already hear the objections of the Illusive Man in her head. _Especially after all the expense we went through to retrieve her?_

She hardened her look. "Your assignment is to make sure the subject is ready for deployment as any other Nemesis operative. Do what you have to do. If there is anything we can learn from her, find it out."

Wilson frowned and nodded, not bothering to point out those goals were very hard to compatibilize. This ice queen would order him to find a way. "Yes ma'am."

After the man left her office, she locked the door. Then she stood on the small circular platform before her desk and tapped a few commands on her omni-tool. Lights died.

Then the sitting, smoking figure of the Illusive Man appeared alone on the blackened room.

"Miranda," he said in greeting, exhaling a puff of smoke.

"The retrieval of subject Lacroix is complete," she reported.

"Good." He took a hit from the cigar, then asked: "How long before she is fit for deployment?"

"Wilson is performing the tests to ascertain that. He raised some objections." She went on to describe the medical officer's initial evaluation and concerns.

"It would be a shame if we cannot employ her to our satisfaction, but if anything, there is a lot we can learn from her." Another puff of smoke. "I have information on your next target."

"I'm listening, sir."

"She's on Illium. She is going to be the intermediary for a sale of restricted cybernetic hardware between Alliance and Citadel criminals. We have a small window of time on this, Miranda," he cautioned her, "so make haste."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ a HUGE thank you to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for proofreading, input and suggestions.


	12. Citadel: Reflections

Earth - Japan, Mie Prefecture

"Kyosuke-san."

" _Hai._ " A young man stood up at once on command and bowed twice, first at the elderly man and then at the woman sitting at his right.

" _Omote gyaku,_ " the woman ordered.

" _Hai._ " The young man turned to another student: "Sayaka-san?"

" _Hai._ " A girl stood up and bowed.

Kyosuke stood in place, appearing mostly relaxed, except for his alert eyes. The girl attacked, her rigid fist aimed at his chin, but he neatly sidestepped and seized her by the wrist. An arm twist, a tripping leg, and the girl was knocked prone. Kyosuke had not let go of the arm. Carefully he leaned on the wrist:

" _Itai!_ " Sayaka clapped on the tatami with her free hand, hard, twice. Her opponent released her at once. He helped her stand up, then both students bowed to each other, and the girl sat again.

" _Yoi,_ Kyosuke-san," the woman next to the elderly man approved.

" _Arigato,_ Kyoko-sensei."

The woman then called up another student to demonstrate another technique. The class went on normally, as they always did.

And all the while Hanzo watched, measuring, judging. For twelve years now his son and his granddaughter had ran this ninjutsu dojo for the clan. He had been there most of the time, advising, correcting, but not teaching. He had passed on that torch. Kyoko was an excellent sensei. The youngest member of the Shimada clan capable of instruction was particularly dedicated to her task, even more so after the mantle had been passed on to her. Hiroshi Shimada had followed in his uncle's steps, and was serving as a Starwatch agent and instructor.

One of the shoji doors slid open, and his other granddaughter Hitomi came in. She waited patiently until Kyoko finished observing another pair of students as they practised, then at the sensei's gesture she approached Hanzo: "Excuse me, grandfather, but you have guests."

The elderly ninja did not ask who it was. The dojo was not remotely located, nor was it up a mountain or a hill. Instead, it was in a small village relatively close to Ise. Its secrecy came from its lack of publicity: it was only known to clan members — and Starwatch. And the clan would have warned him about new students coming there. He stood up, acknowledged Kyoko's bow with a nod, then followed Hitomi out of of the dojo, walking some steps on a manicured garden and into a small house.

Two people were waiting for him there.

"Hello, brother." Genji Shimada knelt and bowed deeply.

Hanzo took his time to look at him. Genji looked exactly as he had been before their falling out and that fateful day he had taken so long to come to terms with: rich, black hair, his frame solid, his body fit and healthy.

Which he knew of course to be a faithful synthetic reconstruction of the original Genji. Cybernetics had come a long way since the days of Overwatch. Modern-day cyborgs and synths could be made to appear nigh-indistinguishable from normal humans.

It was blasphemous, but that was the existence the older Shimada had condemned the younger Shimada to. He bowed back, not kneeling, but very deeply as well. "Welcome, brother. It's good to see you."

Tracer had waited well behind Genji, near Hanzo's granddaughter. The relationship between the two brothers had not been exactly idyllic; it had taken the old ninja decades to come to terms with the fact that his brother was alive and had no enmity towards him.

The passing of time was written on Hanzo. His long hair was now solid white, his skin wrinkled and worn like an old parchment, but however much it tried to, age had not bent his back. Lena still remembered how the archer had looked when she had first met him: tall, supple, severe.

This was yet another reminder of how inhuman she had become, and despite how often she had faced it, it had never become any easier to deal with it. The world she had known had slipped away. Only a few friends remained, and soon, they would too vanish.

Hanzo eyed her, aware of the demons that tormented her and guessing at their motives. He had been youthful and lithe as well, but no more. Each time she had visited him over the years the difference had been more pronounced, but he had accepted it. He only regretted one thing in life, and his brother's forgiveness had done much to mitigate that burden.

"Welcome to you, too, Lena. How are you?"

She smiled. "You know, the usual thing. Wake up early in the morning, exercise, go to the lab, do my share of work. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Everything about you is out of the ordinary."

"To you, perhaps."

The brothers shared a look. Tracer's cheerful persona was also fading away. In the years that had followed Winston's passing, Lena had grown more thoughtful and withdrawn.

"Zenyatta sends his regards," she added. "He was supposed to come with us, but he was asked to attend a ceremony in Ise. He will be joining us when it's complete."

Actually, a part of the venerable omnic leader was there. His consciousness was linked, via Genji's neural implants, with that of his student. He had reluctantly agreed to it out of Genji's insistence, as the younger Shimada was worried about Tracer and since they spent a lot of time together he wanted to support her as best he could. She was not stubborn or mule-headed, but nonetheless it had taken years for her to find it within herself to follow Genji's suggestion and start studying under the omnic monk. Neither had Tracer been the quiet, contemplative sort — until recently, that was.

"That is very kind of him. I have seen little of him over the years."

"He rarely visits Earth anymore, brother," Genji informed. "Nowadays he spends most of his time traveling between colonies where the Shambali have a presence."

"The duties of a leader," Hanzo said gravely. "It's understandable, considering what happened at that little planet in the middle of nowhere."

"Not to mention the Citadel being scared out of their wits of our omnic friends," Tracer quipped with distaste. "Thanks," she accepted the small cup Hanzo's granddaughter Hitomi was offering her. Similar cups were handed out to the Shimada brothers.

"How are you feeling, Lena?" The old ninja decided he wanted to get that out of the way fast.

"Honestly?" Tracer shook her head. "It hurts, Hanzo-sama. A tenday ago I attended the ceremony on Winston's memorial. Morrison was there, too, alongside Zarya. He's old, too, older than you. Now I spend time mostly with Mercy's and Pharah's daughters and grandchildren. They'll grow old, too, someday. I won't."

"And you fear being left alone."

"Well, not quite, brother," Genji cut in. "What she really fears is feeling detached from everything."

Lena drained her cup. "Years go by, and things change little. In the past, there were terrorists and rogue omnics. Now there are aliens. We worked so hard, lost friends and family…" She shook her head. "Nothing ever changes."

"That's not true, Lena. We did make a difference. Without us, there would be no coexisting with omnics."

"This is the world we built," Hanzo backed his brother. "This is the world we saved. Had we not acted, there would be either no omnics or no humanity at all."

Tracer was flustered. She was failing to get her point across. "You can feel satisfied at that, Hanzo-sama. I also felt like that. But… people feel ever more distant to me. I can't connect with them. Even when they don't know who I am." She sighed. "Soon Morrison will be gone, and there will be another service to attend to. Soon you will be gone, too."

The older Shimada took no offence. He could understand. He had seen his own world slip away, too. He did not have the strength of yore. He was not a sensei anymore. His son and his granddaughter were carrying on with his legacy. But he did not have to worry about feeling detached. He was in the winter of his life, and was living it out the way he had wanted it: his clan revered him as an honored elder, he had reconciled with his brother, and his descendants would continue after him just in the same fashion his ancestors had. He could depart in peace.

There would be no such thing for Lena.

"The gods were wise when they decided not to make us immortal."

Hitomi poured them all more saké, bowed, and left. Lena raised her cup. "I'll drink to that, Hanzo-sama."

The Shimada brothers drank with her. Hanzo quipped humorously afterwards, "I trust only comradely good fellowship is behind your visit."

Lena laughed out loud. "Yes, Hanzo-sama, don't worry. Nothing happened to Hiroshi-san."

"Is he still posted on the Aconcagua?"

"Yes, brother," Genji replied. "He has spent a lot of time with the Asari emigres, studying their fighting style. He told me he wants to develop a discipline incorporating some of their elements."

"Ever the daring one, Hiroshi." Hanzo's brow knotted. "I surmise it won't be easy. These Asari use their own… _powers_ —" the old ninja intentionally accented the word to stress how arcane it appeared to him "—fluidly on their martial arts. He intends to learn those, too?"

Tracer shook her head. "No. Those can't be learned. You have to somehow survive being exposed to eezo in the womb to get those." She did not add that Mila Palukhina and Anika Ziegler were working on a project to replicate that ability on synths and cyborgs using nanites and implants. That she had been let in on such highly sensitive stuff at all marveled her a bit.

A nod. "I find it disquieting, how we have openly let those aliens into our territory while the Council doesn't let us into theirs."

"It's part of a long term plan, brother," Genji replied. He was faced with the everyday implications of the emigre program and had already considered many of the things his elder brother had in his mind now. "They fear us. If we can get them to know us better, maybe that fear will go away a bit. Besides, the emigres are very few. Every one of them is continuously kept under surveillance. An omnic is tasked to each of them when they apply for residence, and they never take their eyes off them."

"It helps that the omnics aren't exactly all smiles about them. No doubt because of the war," Tracer noted. "The Asari haven't complained. If anything, they take it in stride."

"As long as they don't find out things they are not meant to," Hanzo quipped dryly as a spark of an idea flashed in his mind: "Still, these aliens are very long lived, aren't they? You should consider requesting to join the program as a… a case officer, would it be? You may get to learn something useful to you from them."

"If only I was allowed to," Lena lamented. "You know, military regs, plus being an immortal freak, that kind of stuff." She shook her head. "Sometimes I'm tempted to quit everything and disappear."

* * *

Now that over fifty years had passed since Mondatta's assassination, it would have been easy to misconstrue Zenyatta as an anachronism. The venerable omnic leader had not opted for a more modern-looking frame, instead choosing to continuously upgrade the body — or bodies — that had harbored his consciousness.

And in the same way human celebrities and gurus tended to do, in choosing so Zenyatta had become a trendsetter for most omnics. True self is without form, he would usually repeat, and by appearing unconcerned with his appearance he encouraged his kin to look within whenever they sought to reassert their identity — as opposed to changing their outer shell. Of course, as with some Zen Buddhist koans, that phrase could be read in exactly the opposite way, and some omnics did, modifying or even replacing their frames entirely to better suit their selves.

Insofar as it helped his kin find their way, the omnic sage did not mind. He had no claim to the Truth; he only had claim to his truth. It was his self-imposed purpose to help others find theirs.

Such was the case with Tracer now.

"Peace be upon you, Lena," he greeted.

"Thank you, Zeny," she smiled, equally warmly. His near-featureless faceplate was a throwback to the ancient days of Overwatch, but she had associated it with tranquility and wisdom for so long that it did not rouse her demons.

Not too much, that was. The omnic had learned to read humans so accurately he could as well be called a telepath. "Your soul is heavy. Have your explorations uncovered a wound?"

She sat opposite him on the manicured grass. The class was still going on inside the dojo behind him. "I followed your advice. I've been reading everything I could get my hands on related to unnaturally long life."

"And?"

She took a deep breath. "Would you believe this… of all the things I've found, a comic depicting Gilgamesh comes closest to representing what I feel."

A nod. "Share your findings with me."

She did. Gilgamesh was a mythical figure, though this one depiction was not particularly faithful to the Sumerian myth. It showed him as a fundamentally human person, and a broken one at that: in becoming immortal, the king of Uruk had lost the ability to relate with those who were not, and the man despaired at making his city-state a more livable place, futilely striving against the apathy that corroded the souls of his subjects.

"It's the same thing that's happening to me," she blurted out at the end, the verbal admission unexpectedly painful. "This king saw how the walls of his city crumbled to dust and his citizens didn't care, no matter what he told them or how he tried to cajole or persuade them to care."

With a hint of amusement in his voice, the omnic pointed out: "You're no ruler, Lena."

She smiled at the good-natured jab. "I guess that one's a relief." She grew serious again. "What this Gilgamesh did in the end was to fake his own death. When his subjects realized he was gone, they were overjoyed, and the city blossomed again without him."

A thoughtful nod. "A very grim and unflattering comparison."

A shrug. "I know, but it doesn't help."

"His subjects had to have motives not to obey him anymore."

She shook her head once. "I'm not sure… maybe it's because they believed no one had chances of becoming kings themselves while he was there?"

The sage made no gesture. "You hold kingship over no one."

Tracer frowned, bowed her head, and then hazarded another guess: "Because they could not dispute or challenge his orders?"

"Were that the case, no armies would have ever been assembled. Only hordes."

Again Lena frowned. "Because he would be king forever and… no, because they were not immortals like him and they envied him?"

Slowly, one of the spheres that always orbited Zenyatta hovered upwards, while the rest continued to float around him. The omnic stared at the single lone sphere contemplatively, then noted, "Envy is a very powerful and damaging emotion. But envy alone does not lead to despondency."

She was lost in thought for a while. Behind Zenyatta, inside the pagoda, Kyoko was correcting a student as he tried to perform a technique.

At length, she concluded: "No, it's not envy. He was in a place no one could ever reach. I suppose there's no room for ambition when you're ruled by an immortal." She struggled with words: "Not because he'd be aggressively hunting down other aspirants to the throne, but… it would be like living all your life under the shadow of someone who's absolutely perfect at whatever you do and knowing you'll never surpass her. That would be awful."

"Helplessness." The omnic sage entwined his fingers, except for his outstretched indices. "Having an eternity of time is no guarantee of attaining perfection. But it does heighten your chances. And communicating what you learn to others will become ever harder."

Suddenly, she was taken back to her teenage years, back to high school, when a curmudgeonly teacher had hammered the basic facts of philosophy in her mind — chief among them, the tale of Plato's cave.

"So I have to stay fallible."

"Aren't we all essentially flawed?" The omnic asked rhetorically. "The closer you get to perfection, the further away you will be from your fellows."

Lena mulled over that. That small piece of wisdom was in no way a silver bullet that would put all of her demons to rest — but it was a beginning.

A hint of a smile appeared on her lips. "That's a start."

Zenyatta could not smile, but his voice became equally warm. "One step of many." The spheres circled around him twice. Then he asked: "I would see it that way. I wonder why do you."

Her newfound warmth faded at once. "Gilgamesh would say that, as he lived on, he also lost the ability to tell people apart. One man was no different to another, he'd always see their skull and bones beneath their skin." Tracer raised her eyes to look into those of the omnic monk. Her voice became a whisper: "I don't want to end up like that."

Suddenly, one of the spheres was smashed by another with a metallic _clang_. Two more spheres followed the first. The one on the receiving end wobbled jerkily, then settled back into its original orbit. Then again, three spheres smashed against it — only this time, the one being attacked barely shifted from its course.

"We grow harder and insensitive in the face of adversity. Your scars feel not as much as unblemished skin."

"You usually say something like that, how adversity is an opportunity for change."

The spheres started to spin around Zenyatta wildly fast, so much so that her eyes could not follow them. "Desensitizing yourself will blind you to the suffering of others. Don't we relate to each other through our pain?" Then, as suddenly, the spheres slowed back down. "Do not be so strong, Lena. You and I both must learn to live with our wounds."

Cronos Station

The door slid closed behind Widowmaker. She looked around her, looking for windows or cameras or something like that, but found nothing—

—then a laser grid painted her body and the lights died out.

And her figure appeared on a vast office in front of a single man, the huge blazing body of a star behind him.

"Lacroix."

She fixated her yellow eyes on the man. He was simply dressed, yet everything about him screamed sophistication. He was holding a cigar in his right hand, and occasionally let out small puffs of smoke. His eyes—

—were _strange._ No normal eyeballs, but some sort of bionic implants instead, turquoise-blue lights glittering where the iris should be, over a black sclera.

"You have me at a disadvantage here."

The man put his cigar to his lips, then exhaled slowly. "My apologies. I know you don't like it, but it's for our security."

"Our security?"

"Yours and mine both." She felt his piercing gaze scan her, then: "How do you feel?"

She crossed her arms and returned the stare. "Dispense with the pleasantries. Who are you?"

"I'd expected you to ask Miranda about that."

"She's your underling. I don't care for pawns. She'd tell me whatever suits you best."

"Miranda is my lieutenant and as capable an officer as you're going to find. In many ways," the man added. "I trust you've gotten acquainted with the capabilities of people like her?"

"A lot has changed while I slept. But not the basics." She left the rest unsaid: people die to a bullet all the same. That comment should have been accompanied by a shrug, but there was too little of Amélie in Widowmaker still.

"You've been very tight-lipped about your time frozen."

"I slept. That's all there is to know." Her glare grew even more piercing: "You haven't answered my question."

Another puff of smoke. "We are a team tasked with doing the work the Alliance can't or won't do. We are concerned with humanity in an universe filled with people that have little love for us."

 _Another take on Blackwatch._ "So you're a paramilitary supremacist group."

A shrug. "If you will. I'm surprised you care."

The off-handed remark startled her. _But of course. They would not wake me up out of generosity._

But now, the still tender Amélie fought to assert herself over Widowmaker, and she won: "So you're just going to give me a rifle and point me at whoever needs killing. That doesn't leave me much of a choice."

The man put the cigar to his mouth, then exhaled slowly. "That didn't seem to bother you before."

He tapped something on a holographic panel, and a screen popped up. It was a view of the Numbani memorial. Amélie recognized Angela Ziegler's figure immortalized in the giant statue near the dome, and a series of plaques bearing names…

Something snapped inside her when she read 'Gérard Lacroix'.

She stood breathlessly, stiff like the statue on that screen, as her mind, heart and soul went into overdrive.

Her memory was a mess, a spotty, blood-soaked blanket on which she could only glimpse a few things, but Gérard's final face was one of those.

If Talon had not been so thorough and keen to strip away her ability to show any feelings, she would have collapsed where she stood and cried her eyes out.

But as it was, all she could do was to stare at the plaque, while her mind desperately struggled —and failed— to push away the image of his shocked and horrified face as he exhaled his last breath.

Her face did not change. There was not a blink, not a gesture.

But a single tear welled from her left eye and rolled down her cheek. Then another.

"This is what you brought me back for?" She whispered. "To torture me?"

He put aside his cigar for a moment. For an instant the guilt-wracked Amélie saw pity on that face. "No. I'm sorry, but it was necessary."

She murmured a curse in French at that comment, but that was as much as she could do, even if her mutilated soul was wailing in grief. More tears spilled, but her face was frozen solid.

"I was better off asleep," she mumbled almost imperceptibly.

"You can make up for that."

Someone else would have raged at that loudly, or smiled bitterly in refusal. She did not.

"Nothing can make up for what I did to Gérard."

"That blood will never come off," the man agreed, "but you can make restitution for the others."

"Save your breath. They did better fifty years ago," was the quiet answer.

He stood up. "We brought you back to give you a new purpose. You can put your skills to use in a way to help humanity." He tapped his omni-tool. A hologram came up: it was the same video feed Secretary Udina had irately shown in the Citadel embassy a scant tenday ago. "The Citadel is determined to asphyxiate us. Their agents work incessantly to steal our technology. They refuse us trading rights, while smugglers in unaligned space trade out our goods to them." Then a holographic map of the galaxy came up: "And then there are the Batarians. They hate the Council for not backing them on their claims against us, but they don't see they are being pawned against us.

"We are surrounded by enemies, Amélie. The Alliance is impotent. They uncover a huge Citadel espionage ring, and what do they do? They 'protest the intrusion.' That's where we come in." He stared at her in the eye. "We can give you a new purpose, a new life, but only if you'll take it. We had to confront you with your past. It hurts, and I'm sorry for that, but I won't apologize. As I said, it was necessary."

Widowmaker took charge as the traumatized Amélie was still numb with shock and pain. "What happens if I accept?"

The man sat back in his chair. "You get to do again what you once did so well. In the company of some of the same people, even."

The hooded, masked specter of Reaper flashed in her mind. "And if I refuse?"

A shrug. "You could help train our operatives, share your knowledge and experience with them. Also, I must admit, Talon went down some avenues of research to create you that remain unexplored up to this day. Your cooperation in that regard would be appreciated." Again the piercing stare. "You must understand, given what you've seen and where you've been —and what you are— it would be next to impossible just to let you go. We need our secrecy to operate."

For a few seconds the woman and the man looked into each other's eyes.

"This will only work if I get to know my targets before I pick them."

He nodded thoughtfully, as if it was a difficult concession to grant, when in reality it was not. He could afford it; he had won. "We can manage that." A tap on a holographic panel, and the conference was over.

The lights turned back on while the door opened behind her with a pneumatic hiss.

"Seems we'll be working together again."

She did not turn to confront Reaper. Her memory was coming back like a rushing torrent, and Amélie quailed before the magnitude of what she had done.

The _horror_ in Gérard's face would chase her to her grave.

But, as the man with the strange eyes had said, even if that blood could never come off, she could do something to make restitution for the rest.

"Let's just hope it turns out better this time."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** contributed priceless criticism and encouragement, in particular as I tried to capture the essence of Widowmaker and Zenyatta.


	13. Citadel: Business disrupted

Skyllian Verge - Petra nebula

In the past, it had been a matter of discussion to risk human lives when the advent of artificial intelligence meant that a lot of jobs aboard a starship could be performed by an AI instead, and more efficiently at that. But after omnics had been recognised as sentient individuals, simply throwing synthetics at a problem like so much cannon fodder was as unethical —and unlawful— as throwing fresh recruits off naval school at the same problem.

Now, onboard AI, omnics and humans all worked together to run a ship as a team. It was possible for the AI to do it all by itself, but relying entirely on it created an Achilles' heel someone could eventually exploit. Not that it was likely that the Hegemony had figured out the nuts and bolts of how AIs worked —the Citadel races definitely had the knowledge, but not the willingness to put it to use—, but it was not something to leave up to chance.

"Colonel Anderson, there's a new message for you from Watchpoint: Elysium," the feminine voice reported on the speakers in the combat information center of the _Thermopylae._

David Anderson, for one, was damned glad to have her. "Thanks, Stella. I'll take it myself."

Aaliyah Shepard followed him by the corner of the eye. "News, skipper?"

He tapped his omni-tool once, frowned briefly, then ordered, "I want agents Oxton, Shimada, Brulirea and Lumiscant."

"On it."

A minute later, the two Overwatch legends and the two omnics joined Anderson and Shepard on the circular briefing room.

"So what's the story?" Tracer asked without ceremony as she sat.

"We just got a priority alert from Admiral Mikhailovich. Stella?"

"Yes, Colonel." At once, everything on the room disappeared, to be replaced by the figure of the Admiral standing on a similar room, with a hologram projector displaying a galaxy map in the middle.

"Colonel Anderson," the veteran Alliance officer said huskily in greeting. "I must interrupt your deployment because of a matter of the highest importance.

"We're still interrogating the Citadel agents belonging to the Piks ring. One of them was running a… personal… enterprise of sorts. He sold information about a freighter delivering supplies to a scientific station on the Petra nebula to a band of Batarian corsairs. They have not yet learned where the station is, but if they have half a brain they'll sweat that out of the crew and attempt to raid it.

"You're the closest ones at hand to deal with this situation. I fear you may nonetheless arrive too late to protect the freighter, but with some luck you may be on time to help the scientists.

"Mikhailovich out."

The hologram faded away. The Starwatch officers exchanged glances.

"Questions?" Anderson asked.

"What kind of lunatic would set up a research station right on the Batarians' doorstep?" Lumiscant asked, her voice rough as sandpaper.

"When they say 'research station', I hear 'listening post'," her colleague, Brulirea, replied wryly.

 _We'd know,_ Shepard thought to herself, but added nothing. There were other listening posts around the Skyllian Verge. If this one was yet another, why disguise it as a 'research station' instead of telling them?

"Whatever the reason, it's yet another time we're racing to pull some poor sod's arse out of the fire," Lena quipped bleakly. Then she was reminded of Zenyatta's words: "But then, no one else can."

* * *

"Checkpoint LIMA reached," Stella informed.

"That's my girl," Lena approved. The _Thermopylae_ did not handle as a fighter jet, but it was nimble enough that sometimes it allowed its designated pilot to have her share of fun. Tracer was universally renowned because of her exploits as an Overwatch agent — and her immense following knew she owed her peculiar condition to a mishap during a test run of an experimental fighter she was piloting. There was nothing Lena Oxton could not get bored of, but flying was close up there.

Mikhailovich's prediction turned out to be true. "Skipper, we're here… and there she is."

Tracer stood up and, after a polite nod to Anderson, left the bridge to join the rest of the squad in the hangar. The CO watched her go, then demanded:

"Stella, I need info."

"The freighter is completely powered down, sir," an operator reported as the destroyer's sensor suite got to work. "The thing's a hunk of metal."

"No hull breaches." Inside the Kodiak shuttle, suited up and ready to go, Shepard was studying the feed on the screen by the bulkhead, her piercing eyes going over the flat shape of the cargo ship.

"The captain did as he was told without fuss," Astrid Martinsson hazarded a guess.

"Maybe he had hoped to save the lives of his crew that way." Genji shook his head. "Poor man."

"Vulture flight, proceed to target with caution," Anderson ordered. He did not want to see the best and brightest of Starwatch dying to a booby-trapped wreck. Batarian corsairs were infamous for those, and very skilled at setting them up.

Starwatch had come to rely on omnics to solve these situations, and this would be one more such time. Brulirea and Lumiscant would have their logic and memory cores decoupled and lodged on special mounts in the shuttle, whence they could remotely control their frames via tightbeam. It was neither comfortable nor enjoyable for either of them —not every omnic was detached from its physical form like Zenyatta was—, but it was the safest course of action.

A few minutes later, the shuttle sped towards the disabled freighter, then about halfway from its destination Tracer cut power to half, to eventually chop speed to barely a tenth with a quarter of the distance to go. Clearly she was taking Anderson's orders to heart.

In the meantime, the omnics, as engineers, were using every form of sensor available to them to take the ship apart. The rest of the Starwatch team waited quietly, a little expectantly, but that was that. It was nowhere near their first such operation, and even if there always existed the chance of the enemy bringing up the unexpected to bear on them, preparation and cool blood had so far defeated such surprises.

So far.

That thought always reared its ugly head on their minds. There was no such thing as too much caution.

Uneasily, Brulirea gave her verdict: "It's stone-cold dead, but I don't like it. There could be laser tripwires or physical devices that do not emit radiation or mechanical devices concealed among the machinery."

"I knew we'd have to do this the old-fashioned way," Shepard groused. "Get that zero-g door open."

Amber rotating lights turned on, setting on warnings on everyone's HUDs. Moments later, the side door slid open, and air whooshed out. The two omnics jumped out, rotated in midair, and landed on their feet on the hull. Brulirea at once worked the emergency access mechanism, and Lumiscant forced the large hatch open. It opened smoothly. As expected, the ship was depressurized.

Shepard slaved her HUD to the sensors in the omnics' frames to follow their progress. They were going painstakingly slowly, and with good reason, as they had perhaps walked some half-dozen steps down the main access hallway when Lumiscant froze:

"There." She sprayed smoke to reveal a series of blue beams. Tripwires. Carefully the omnic followed the beams until she found the emitters. "Here they are…"

Brulirea noticed the devices and her glare traced along the cables attached to them. It was an antiquated, clunky and primitive way of setting up traps, but no less effective, smart or deadly because of that: "Shielded wiring… Fuel cells… Oh. Clever. That's why they did not radiate anything…"

"No way to notice that on scanners."

The rest of the Starwatch team listened. So far, those were smart countermeasures any bomber would put into place to avoid detection, but nothing special. Except for one question, one that had long since found its answer on the sheer hatred batarians harbored for the Alliance: why would corsairs and pirates waste resources into extensively booby-trapping ships they capture?

"The payload?" Tracer asked.

"Hold on, girl… First things first…" There was a brief flash of turquoise. "Power diverted. This section is safe. Moving on."

 _In this one case,_ Shepard thought in a flash as the idea hit her like a sandbag falling on her head, _it has the added purpose of delaying us._ But that kind of work could not be skipped.

As the final verdict from the omnic engineers would go to prove, after nearly an hour of painstakingly slow and methodical work: "The ship was extensively wired… and all the cables snake back to… here." Lumiscant's frame was pointing at a device set next to the huge vessel of the fusion core. The saboteur had rerouted the master power flow through this device as well. "A multistage fusion primer. Tripping any one of the wires would have… jump-started the magnetic containment fields… while flooding the fusion chamber with fuel… and turned this ship into plasma. All it would have taken was a tripped wire."

Neither Anderson nor Shepard were particularly troubled by that development, even if it was proof of a new level of ingenuity. Batarian corsairs were capable of some devious tricks and constantly raising their game.

Instead, their mind was on something else. Time.

"The ship is safe," Brulirea declared.

"And not a moment too soon," Shepard breathed. "Time is on their side. Let's get aboard this hunk of junk and find out where these assholes went. Even if they didn't figure out where this ship was going, they got the crew."

Shepard was followed inside the depowered freighter by Tracer, Genji, Martinsson, Aliyev and Olivera. The XO of the _Thermopylae_ made a few hand gestures: Olivera would inspect the crew quarters, Aliyev would examine what was left of the communications room, Shepard herself would search the flight deck, and the rest would go about looking for clues in the cavernous cargo hold.

"I don't remember seeing any signs of fighting earlier," Aaliyah said half to herself.

"Slavers," Tracer spat in disgust. "They don't want their merchandise damaged."

"They did not take any chances with this mech," Aliyev noted. He was squatting on his haunches, next to what once had been a standard six-foot worker frame. The boarders had gone out of their way to wreck it beyond hope. "No scorch marks on the walls, no weapon damage… Whatever tore this one apart used sheer brute strength."

"Don't want to meet whoever did it on an alley after dark," Martinsson quipped. She was entering the cargo hold — and was greeted by a similar scene, only multiplied a dozen or so times over. "No," she confirmed softly, "definitely not."

"What is it with aliens that makes them hate us so much?" Brulirea asked tiredly.

"You know that already." There was bile in Lumiscant's answer, black as venom.

None of their human squadmates dedicated even a fraction of an instant to consider the topic. The fear of omnics eventually deciding that humanity was not necessary —or worse, that it was a burden— stubbornly refused to die, even after such a strong show of commitment to coexistence on both sides as the First Contact War had been. That fear had a basis on how omnics were just so much better than humans at a lot of things. Omnics were now pieces of sentient software that could inhabit shells of the most varied sizes; whatever the task was, there was an omnic frame suited for it.

But those people so afraid of omnics seldom asked them what they appreciated in humans. And what omnics appreciated the most was the diversity of ideas and opinions humans produced on any one given subject, something they mightily struggled with — and also human intuition, which was to them downright incomprehensible, despite being fully sentient, independent and self-aware.

Which was, to them, alright to a point. Zenyatta preached for both omnics and humans to avoid perfection.

"Look at that line of eezo!" Martinsson exclaimed as the sensors on her suit spiked.

"The corsairs probably got more than they expected to find here," Genji noted next to her. The raiders had not been exactly careful when handling their loot here: at least one container had partially ruptured, if not more. "I wonder what else was this ship carrying."

"I'm working on it," Shepard reported. Someone had been very smart and used the ship's black boxes to back up all the data on the computers before the raiders had utterly and completely trashed them. They had clearly searched for them —and found and wrecked the dummies prepared for such situations—, but not thoroughly enough. "Stella, I'm patching you through to the black boxes now. Tell us what you find."

"Understood, XO," came the reply.

Aaliyah was digging on her own while the _Thermopylae's_ AI worked. She did not want any directives screening anything from her. "Genji, this is what you were looking for."

The Overwatch legend went through the cargo manifest on his HUD: nanite canisters… bionics… surgical instruments… hardlight casters… and not a small shipment of eezo.

Martinsson voiced Genji's —and Tracer's— thoughts: "Some scientific station, sir?"

"I have an idea, but nothing solid," the Japanese replied curtly, guarding his misgivings.

"Isn't this odd," they heard Olivera note as she checked the crew quarters.

"What is it, Marcela?" Shepard asked.

"They thoroughly looted the first aid cabinet, down to the last pill and bottle."

"I'm beginning to see a pattern here," Aliyev mused.

"Yes," Genji agreed. "They were a little too meticulous to be corsairs or slavers."

"Wait a minute here—they left nothing at all, you say?" Tracer interrupted.

"Not a thing, ma'am—"

"Marcela!"

"—Lena. Sorry," she apologized. "No, nothing. They took everything, up to and including the protein canisters. That is useless without the mixer, and they did not take it."

"What about the food stores?"

"I haven't checked them yet, but…" After a second of ruffling, Olivera added: "There's nothing here either."

"Awfully considerate of slavers or corsairs," Martinsson snorted.

"More like proper business sense. I'm not in the slave trade but I reckon they wouldn't get as much for someone half-dead of starvation and disease," Aliyev noted sourly. "Except…"

"Except that batarians usually don't give a rat's ass about either," Shepard completed. "I can think of another reason: they have at least one wounded captive somehow valuable to them, someone they took on a previous raid. Otherwise they wouldn't go looking for foodstuffs or drugs on hijacked freighters. Stella, how is that coming along?"

"I have reconstructed the feeds from the worker droids and the cameras aboard the ship," the AI informed. "I'm forwarding them to you now."

The brute was huge — no other word would do for someone over seven feet tall and four feet wide. Its humped reptilian frame dwarfed that of the batarians around him.

Aliyev frowned. "Krogan."

Unconsciously Shepard nodded, sharing her concern. She watched how one of the gray-clad batarians gave a series of curt orders; at once, one of the krogan reached out for an omnic frame and started tearing it apart methodically with its bare hands, piece by piece. She counted half a dozen of the enormous aliens and around twenty corsairs. The krogan set themselves to the task of utterly destroying the mechs with seeming enthusiasm while their smaller companions shoved the human crew out of the freighter and worked to turn it into the giant boobytrap they had found.

As she cycled through the feeds, Tracer's eyes fixated on an image. "I've seen that ship before."

At once Stella produced a schematic. "Light destroyer of Quarian design and manufacture. Reported as lost to piracy by the Flotilla on 2124. Responsible for five pirate raids, and suspected of participation in twelve more incidents." She attached a map of the Skyllian Verge indicating the points where the frigate had been sighted. "The SI division speculates the ship is under the command of Ka'hairal Balak, known batarian External Forces operative."

Lumiscant quickly sifted through all the feeds, views and data they had got on the raiders off the freighter's computers. "Someone did most of the dirty work for us. That ship is barely holding together as it is. It probably won't go far."

Shepard clenched her fists. "That's some good news for a change."

Martinsson thought for a few instants. "Greed got the best of them, XO?"

"Everyone makes mistakes. We too, people." Her brain was working at full speed. The corsairs' lead had paid off, so they could retreat to wherever their hideout was, lick their wounds, and question their prisoners. If the Hegemony was behind it, it was a sure thing they would want to get their hands on a whole research facility if they caught wind of it. They would assume it to be well defended, and they would take their time to hit it in force — and by then the crew of the freighter would be toiling away in some remote batarian penal colony. No, if they wanted to abort the batarian strike they had to give chase. There was a slim chance of saving the crew, but the sad truth was that at best everything would devolve into a hostage situation, and at worst their enemy would escape.

They had no hard evidence about where their prey was going, but she could hazard a guess. Repairing a ship of that size was not something you could do on a hollowed-out asteroid in the middle of nowhere. A shipyard was needed — and those facilities were so large and needed so much support that they were impossible to conceal. There were no such places on the Skyllian Verge, but they did exist on nearby Alliance, Citadel and Hegemony space.

And that was enough. "Skipper?" Shepard asked. "They're running home."

"I agree," Anderson concurred. "Everyone back to the ship. Let's move it, people!"

* * *

"New contact," Stella alerted. At once the hologram projector in the center of the CIC changed to depict a representation of their target. It was a vaguely oval-shaped blob at first, but it quickly changed as the sensors of the _Thermopylae_ examined it.

"Displacement is on the light destroyer range," an operator reported. "Engine emissions are low."

"Either they were trying to lay low or they're too damaged to go any faster," Shepard mused.

Anderson replied, "We'll find out soon enough. Time to the relay?"

Stella replied, "At current speed, twenty-seven minutes. Enemy vessel will be within jump range in nineteen minutes."

"We'll see how fast they are," Shepard said roughly. "Tracer, punch it!"

"Now you're talking my language, XO."

"Launch our fighter drones," Anderson ordered. "I want that destroyer neutralized and immobilized ASAP."

They watched the mass of dots speed towards the icon of the destroyer in the ladar feed. Still suited up and waiting inside the Kodiak, Martinsson wondered: "How come they're not hailing us or threatening to kill the hostages if we don't back off or something?"

"Probably their ship is that battered," Aliyev guessed.

The uneasy peace that had taken hold after the First Contact War had been overshadowed by a furious arms race between the Alliance and the Citadel. There were motives on both sides for this, but mostly on the latter: the Council had been dismayed at the ruthless efficiency of the Alliance doctrine involving combined use of cyberwarfare and lots of fighter drones, and while the Turians had inflicted grievous damage on the human-omnic combine, it had come at a horrendous cost.

However, for all its efforts, the Council still relied on overwhelming numbers and brute strength to muscle itself into positions of strength when negotiating with the Alliance, having failed to mitigate its technological disadvantage. There were two reasons for this. The first one was that their unrestricted use of AIs gave humans an edge in counterintelligence the Citadel could not defeat. The other was Pokhara itself. Despite tense diplomatic standoffs, the world had remained firmly in the Alliance's grasp, and the amount of matériel, lives and political capital it would entail to conquer it was insurmountably high.

But while both sides had squared off over the bargaining table, humans and omnics had reverse engineered the cyborg wrecks made by whatever it was that lurked there —nobody dared to set foot there after multiple attempts to solve that mystery had ended gruesomely, and the planet was the most heavily monitored place in the whole galaxy—. The net result was that, when it came to toughness, firepower, and cyberwarfare, Alliance vessels were at least two generations ahead of their Citadel counterparts.

That difference was even more evident this time: the _Thermopylae's_ drones were state of the art, whereas the pirate destroyer was already vintage by galactic standards — and so its point defences were barely a nuisance.

What did come as a surprise was what followed: the forward bulkheads of the destroyer went off in a detonation. "Skipper!"

"I see!"

Then, a smaller ship surged from amidst the cloud of debris: a tiny shuttle that darted away blindingly fast. "Send our fighters after that shuttle!" Shepard ordered on the spot as she ran towards the elevator. "Tracer, on me!"

The Kodiak's engines were already screaming when Aaliyah and Lena raced into the hangar. The latter blinked forward and in a split second was in the pilot seat; the shuttle had already started moving when Shepard jumped into the open passenger bay. Martinsson grabbed her by the arm and pulled her inside. "Got you, ma'am!"

"Thanks." There was nothing else to say. Everyone knew what was at stake. The shuttle blazed out of the _Thermopylae's_ hangar and hustled flat out towards the wrecked destroyer.

The point defense guns were silent, no doubt because of the EW suites on the fighter drones; most of them had gone after the shuttle, but half a dozen still loitered around to guard the Kodiak.

The shuttle approached the zero-g hatch. A brief check on her HUD, then Shepard punched the door release mechanism. At once Brulirea and Lumiscant jumped out. This time, Aaliyah had brought spare frames for her omnic fellows — neither liked the idea much, but it would be foolish not to take that precaution.

The omnics landed on the hull with their feet and at once went to work. The first thing they did was to introduce probes to scan the ship. "We got life signs," Brulirea reported at once, then after a few instants: "We're being expected. Right behind this door. Big fellows."

 _Krogan mercenaries._ "Get the door open. Martinsson, shield up. The rest of you, stand to."

"Yes, ma'am."

Aliyev's plasma torch cut through the heavy bolts securing the zero-g hatch. The omnics glanced at each other, then dug their articulated hands between the doors and pulled. There was a strain of metal on metal, more felt than heard, then the doors wrenched open a few inches — and the omnics immediately jumped aside, expecting the inevitable shot—

—but nothing happened.

Aaliyah was trying to get a look within the ship. There were six krogan there, fully armed and armored, but they had not opened up at the first sign of a door breach as she had expected.

"Force those doors open."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

It took a single pull. The doors resisted, but gave way — and immediately afterwards Astrid Martinsson was there, squad-shield deployed and hardlight caster ready and charged on her right hand.

And down the short corridor, the krogan looked back at them.

One of them, covered in scars and clad in dull red armor, stepped forward and pointed down the hallway to his right. "The people you're after are in the engineering bay. There's twenty of them, plus forty-three hostages."

Astrid was dumbstruck. They were standing down? Just like that? Krogan mercenaries, the most bloodthirsty and vicious fighters all over the galaxy?

Shepard joined Martinsson, followed by the rest of her squad. She stared at the huge alien. The reptilian eyes glared back dispassionately.

"Why?"

A shrug. It was apparently an universal gesture. "That batarian left us here to rot. What's the point of dying for him? I'm not deluding myself about our chances either. We can fight you, even win. But we can't defeat an Alliance vessel on our own. Besides," he added, with an amused gleam in his eye, "we already got paid. Half our fee, at any rate. Not worth dying for the rest."

It was a brutally honest, objective and accurate assessment. "If you know that, you also know we can't go forward leaving armed people behind us."

"That would be very stupid. Tell you what," the krogan offered. "We get safe passage, and we don't get in your way. Oh, and by the way, you will probably want this. You don't want these fanatics scuttling what's left of the ship on you." The alien tossed something that looked like a computer part on the deck near Shepard's feet. "You want to hurry. It won't be long before they figure something doesn't work."

Her perplexity shifted into suspicion. "What's your angle?"

"Getting out of here alive. Isn't that enough of an angle for you? If it eases your mind, we'll wait outside until you're done. We got enough oxygen to last us for days if we have to. Your fighters can keep an eye on us so we don't change our tune. How's that sound to you?"

Tracer smirked. "You've made it bloody simple for us."

The krogan scowled. "I'm too old to deal in nonsense. I should have known better than getting involved with the Hegemony." A gesture, and his fellow mercs reluctantly put their weapons on the deck. "Mind our guns. They're worth a haul."

Warily, but pleasantly surprised, Aaliyah let the krogan walk out of the ship under the vigilant eyes of her squad. After all, she had avoided what could have been the bloodiest part of the engagement. "I will want to have a chat with you later, mister…"

"Wrex."

They waited for a tense half of a minute while the aliens made their way out and they were handed over for guarding to Stella and the _Thermopylae's_ drones and point defence guns. Then they turned their attention back to the business at hand, and started making their way down the main corridor of the dilapidated vessel, Martinsson and the omnics on point, Aliyev, Oxton and Shimada and slightly behind them and Shepard and Olivera closing the march. There still was power, which came as a bit of a surprise given the extensive damage to the ship—

—but then, as they immediately found out after forcing a door open, internal defenses such as the heavy duty kinetic barrier they came upon would require it.

Yuri Aliyev stepped forward and put his plasma torch to the barrier, but soon it turned out that it alone would not be enough. He switched places with Shepard, who used her hardlight projector to pierce through it, first, then to create a small gap that the omnics helped enlarge. The first one to go through, of course, was Martinsson, who at once deployed her squad-shield to protect her fellows.

The next such obstacle they found, however, would not prove so easy to overcome, as after they forced the door open they were treated to a full squad of batarian raiders waiting on the other side of the barrier, on cover, weapons aimed.

Alliance and Hegemony troops stared at each other coldly on both sides of the barrier. Behind her stolid face, Shepard grappled with the problem as her engineers got to work. There was no way this stand off ended in anything other than a massacre. If the enemy realized they would not be able to scuttle the ship before they could stop them, they had all the time and the means to stall them while they slaughtered the hostages.

Pretend to try to breach the barrier, but fail, she instructed Lumiscant via the squad network.

She intended to message Tracer next, but the Overwatch legend beat her to it and asked her to retreat out of sight. Then, Oxton whispered, "Hull breach?"

A nod. "Take Brulirea and Genji with you."

"It will have to be done extremely carefully, ma'am," the omnic cautioned.

"I know, I know, lots of stuff that goes boom in the engineering deck," Aaliyah acknowledged, a bit more dryly than she intended.

She returned to the front and watched Lumiscant do her work while Martinsson guarded her and traded hostile looks with the enemy on the other side of the barrier. They were not moving from their combat-ready stances behind cover. That made it official to Shepard: these were not simple raiders, for raiders would be fidgeting, looking for ways out, knowing they were cornered. They were elite batarian operatives, indoctrinated into fanatical hatred of everything the human-omnic Alliance meant. They would not listen to reason.

That did not mean she did not have to try. Hell, she might be wrong.

Alliance regulations framed a very specific way of approaching enemy forces in custody of hostages, but she knew that approach would only further embolden their enemy into further fanaticism. So instead of intoning the introductory litany and stating of terms, she merely put her rifle away, sat cross-legged on the floor —to the questioning look of Astrid— and pretended not to notice the fifteen batarians pointing their guns at the barrier between them for a while.

Then she started talking.

"You think you don't, but you have a choice. You have kidnapped Alliance citizens and destroyed Alliance property. You don't have to ask what we do to Alliance enemies in return.

"You have two scores of hostages. You will kill them if we press further. If that happens we will grind you into mincemeat and send your pieces back to the Hegemony into small boxes aboard the wreck of one of your cruisers. I will take no pleasure in accomplishing this, but I will do it. We will look for the pride and joy of your navy and warp its hull into some caskets for you."

Her subordinates were now looking at her with some dread. She was taking her time to speak now, slowly and tiredly. By the corner of her eye she noticed someone shifted in discomfort in front of her. She took it as a sign of encouragement and kept talking.

"When all of this happens, your compatriots will demand revenge, and you will probably get it. Then my own will demand vengeance in turn. And we will continue to spiral down towards chaos.

"We can avert that here and now. If you release your hostages and lay down your weapons now, no further harm will come to you. You will be released in Omega, or Illium, or in any other Terminus world of your choice. Do not throw away your lives."

Tracer's signal flashed on her HUD: _We're in position._

One of the troopers in front of her stood up from his crouching position. He took off his helmet, to reveal the typical four-eyed batarian visage, and spat on the floor. "Your arrogance is astounding. All of us here have lost friends and family to you and your robot flunkies. While I draw breath—while we draw breath!— we will fight you to the last drop of blood!" His harangue was met by a challenging roar of hatred by his comrades.

 _It's a go,_ Shepard ordered.

The batarian continued his challenge: "What makes you think anything you can say can persuade us?"

After a second's pause, she quietly replied, "I didn't."

There was a low rumble then. The batarian immediately realized what was afoot and shouted a series of orders, then his expression became puzzled momentarily as he did not get the reply he was expecting.

"It's too late." Shepard shook her head. "Our two best agents have already taken care of your sentries and are escorting out the hostages." Another sigh. "If only you had listened."

Then she stood and gestured a single order. At once her subordinates turned around to leave.

The batarian was flabbergasted, then he understood: "Don't you dare turn your back on us!" He tapped a command on his omni-tool, but nothing happened. His men looked at him, stunned:

"It's no use," Shepard said over her shoulder. "Either your leader doesn't care, or he has forgotten that mercenaries have no allegiance, only prospective employers." Casually she dropped the computer part that the krogan had given her. "I don't believe you would ask me, but if you did, I'd say that he believes the information he got is worth sacrificing the rest. Would you agree?"

* * *

"Your name?"

"Xiao Linping," the stocky woman introduced herself curtly. Her face was gaunt and angular, with high cheekbones, her eyes jet-black orbs peering through slits. She still had most of the implements and tools of her trade, up to and including a functional omni-tool, despite having been held for months on end. Being rescued had not changed her dry disposition, but Shepard understood this was part of the coping mechanism that had allowed her to endure captivity. "When they captured me, she was already here," she explained as she walked the XO of the _Thermopylae_ through the cargo hold of the pirate ship, "but they had no idea about how to treat her. I don't understand why they thought I would know."

Aaliyah found her discourse puzzling, though it made sense the moment she saw who was Xiao talking about: it was a humanoid, feminine in shape and slim in complexion, though the similarities ended there. She had three fingers on each hand instead of five, and her legs resembled the hind quarters of a quadrupedal — her knees were distinctly backwards. She was lying on a makeshift hospital bed assembled out of a derelict cryosleep pod, and most of what she could see of her was dressed in a suit of some kind, except for her face. Her features were mostly human, except for some canals underneath her eyes, a series of orifices and gill-like slits on her face, forehead and outer cheeks, and the total lack of pupils.

It was also immediately evident this alien was very, very sick: the breathing mask affixed to her face might not give that away, but the encrusted secretions around every opening and orifice on her face and the abundant sweat on her forehead did.

"Olivera, get over here right now," she ordered automatically, then she turned to Xiao: "What can you tell us at the moment?"

"Systemic infection," the Chinese replied on the spot. "Very depressed immune system. This poor woman has next to no internal ecosystem to speak of — only the basest form of intestinal flora. Bad as she might look, she was worse off ten days ago. Phage treatment's been taking hold," she explained.

"I'm surprised the batarians would go to such lengths to keep her alive," Shimada noted.

"True," Xiao agreed. "They would not say why. When they raided my freighter they simply asked who was the medic, and they dragged me here. I had to keep her alive if I didn't want to end up like the rest of my crew, they said." She let out a sigh.

Shepard clenched her fists but added nothing. They had arrived — late, but they had arrived. She could not be everywhere.

"Why did they keep her here?" Genji could not bring himself to stop speculating. "Surely they could have hideouts better equipped to care for valuable hostages."

The Chinese shook her head. "I'm sorry. I wish I had answers for you. They would ask me what I needed, but that was that. They weren't forthcoming."

"Mayhaps they had their reasons to move her around," Tracer speculated. "Say, she managed to send a distress signal and her fellows are after her?"

"She's important to them, that's for sure," Martinsson commented. "Well, Quarians made the Geth, didn't they? I know, ma'am, I know," she backed off in anticipation of Shepard's glare, "I don't have a shred of a proof, but other than us, they're the to-go experts when it comes to AGI."

"I've told you a metric fuckton times not to wild-ass guess, Astrid." Martinsson had been right to be wary of her superior's reaction…

 _But in this one case I'll let it slide,_ Shepard's tone told her. If the Hegemony was doing AI research—no, it was a _given_ the Hegemony wanted to get on an equal footing with the Alliance on all aspects, and AI development was one of those. The question was, just how far along had their research come?

Marcela Olivera arrived and, after a very quick check-up, she noted, "You are to be commended for your skill, doctor Linping."

"Oh, no, please, I'm not a doctor. I didn't graduate."

"If you know what to do and when to do it, that's enough in my book, diplomas be damned," she retorted. "If you ever want to complete your studies I—no, we'll be glad to help out. It's not like we have a lot of experience with Quarians and yet you've managed on your own for so long." She gave Shepard a nod, then ordered over the radio: "Stella, we're going to need some droids to transport this Quarian into the med bay."

Apparently Xiao was not prepared to deal with kindness in the same way as she had dealt with the harshness and brutality of her captors, because she had to brush a tear away. "Thanks-thanks a lot. For coming for us."

Shepard was going to reply that it was just her job, but an alert flashed red on her HUD and Anderson spoke on her earbuds: "XO, get everyone back aboard ASAP. We just received an SOS. Elysium is under attack."

* * *

Credits and thanks:

 **\- BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for their usual and much appreciated criticism and proofreading.  
\- I used the Quarian created by **laloon** on DeviantArt (Tali-Zorah-303921301) as a model for the one depicted here. Apologies if I failed to describe her properly, but I simply don't know half of the words.  
\- Shepard's comment on the mutable loyalty of mercenaries is another take on maxim #49 of _The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries_ from **Schlock Mercenary.**


	14. Citadel: Hot Landing

Elysium orbit - SSV Thermopylae

Anderson was ashen. "My… God."

The main holographic projector in the combat information center was displaying what was left of the planetary defense grid. Elysium was a veritable paradise, but settlement had been slow — its proximity to both Citadel and Hegemony space had scared off many a potential colonist. Facilities had been built for berthing and servicing the large garrison fleet once expected to be stationed there, but the place was so obvious a target that the Batarians and other pirates had simply skipped it; thus, as time had went by, ships tasked to Elysium had had to be allocated elsewhere until none remained, replaced instead by a veritable bulwark of orbital defense stations.

And apparently they had dodged the bullet one too many times.

"What kind of thing can punch holes like those?" Shepard was equally pale. "Those stations have _meters_ of armor! Not to mention the shields…"

"Something just did, regardless," the CO said gravely. "Stella, any success?"

"Negative," the AI reported. "Usual channels are nonresponsive. I'm trying alternative communication methods."

"Keep at it. How long before we are within gate range?"

"Nine minutes, seven seconds."

"Shepard, put together a recon team and get ready. If we can't establish communications with neither Illyria nor the Watchpoint we'll have to go in ourselves."

"Got it, skipper. Tracer?"

"Aye, luv. Stella, you have the wheel."

"I have the wheel," the AI echoed.

"Get our fighters out there. I want to know where the enemy is."

The standard fighter complement for a destroyer like the _Thermopylae_ consisted of sixty strike craft that could easily be reconfigured for space superiority or close air support duties just by swapping out a few modules. Right now, the priority was to know what was out there, so they quickly spread out.

As they combed the surrounding space while their mothership unsuccessfully tried to establish contact with the surface, icons started to pop up on the ladar feed. "All the comm buoys accounted for, sir. All destroyed."

"Someone took their time to isolate this place well and good," Shepard mumbled.

"And succeeded," Anderson agreed darkly.

Stella informed, "Colonel, we're in position over Illyria. I'm not one to hazard guesses, but I reckon our assistance is needed on the surface."

The holographic projector changed into a feed from the main settlement, and both Anderson and Shepard instantly recognized the outlines of those figures long before the image sharpened enough for them to tell apart details. They were strikingly familiar ones, figures that brought them back both twenty years.

In machinegun succession Shepard ordered, "Stella, retask two thirds of our fighters to close air support. Get the hardsuits and Bulwarks ready for deployment. I want everyone from teams 1 through 4 on the ready room at once."

"Understood."

She turned to Anderson then: "I can handle the planetside part of this situation, but we don't know where they're coming from."

The commanding officer of the _Thermopylae_ nodded in agreement. "I'll keep that other end covered and reach out to Arcturus if they don't know already. You get down there." He left the rest unsaid: _And be careful._

 _Always, skipper._ "Yes sir."

Aaliyah and Lena left the bridge together. Alarms rang in the corridors, yellow lights spinning everywhere, both humans and omnics running down the passageways. Still that was not enough to block Tracer's voice:

"Why would the Turians mount such a brazen and open attack on a backwater colony such as this?"

Shepard shook her head. "They surely have a motive. We'll know soon."

* * *

To their concern —but not to their surprise— they discovered that gating down to the Watchpoint installation was not an option, so Aaliyah mustered her men on the hangar and laid out what little information they had of the situation planetside — Illyria and their base there were being besieged by Turian forces, and that was all they knew.

There was only some mild shock, as evinced by Westmoreland's: "Holy shit, ma'am."

"Okay, now that you got that out of your system, let's get down to business, people," Shepard said forcefully. "There's a colony under attack down there. You don't need me to tell you what to do."

"Don't worry, ma'am," Lumiscant answered, rough as usual. "We'll remind those bluebloods why they didn't want to mess around after Pokhara."

"Good. I expected no less."

The twenty men and women were to Shepard something akin to family. As Overwatch and the N7 program had fused into Starwatch, Aaliyah had used all of her newfound connections and prestige to get each of her old troopers a chance at earning a commission in the new agency. Not all of them had made the cut —Zarya, as Morrison's successor, had proven to be as every bit as uncompromising and demanding a boss as the old soldier had been—, but some had, and they had followed her commander around as she had climbed the ranks. They had grown under the tutelage of the Overwatch elite — and as they had gotten to know those legends, they had also grown protective of them.

The first few times Aaliyah had led men on missions, she had feared that some of them would not return. Occasionally it happened. Such had been the fiasco on the Moon when they had stumbled upon Reaper. But her old CO aboard the London had once told her that a typical motto of many rescue services on Earth —and Starwatch had many purposes and roles, but its essential mission boiled down to protecting humans and omnics, wherever they were— was something along those lines: _You have to go out. You don't have to come back._

Those words had become second nature, and faded into her memory as she evolved from a recruit wet behind the ears to a seasoned marine, and thence to a semi-legendary commander only shadowed by those now seated around her: Genji Shimada, Anika Ziegler, Layali Amari.

But now, as the dropships hurtled towards the besieged colony, zealously escorted by Stella's fighters, those were the words that had jumped to mind, intermixed with the remembrance of the fighting in the bowels of the godforsaken rock where she had witnessed first-hand the surgical efficiency of the Turian fireteams.

 _Be mindful of your thoughts, Aaliyah,_ she cautioned herself. _A wandering mind often finds itself in dark places._ She felt tempted to ask if there were news about what was going on on Illyria, but that was her anxiety speaking.

She caught sight of Martinsson's blue eyes. Both women exchanged glances and read each other's emotions: the shieldbearer nodded her agreement almost imperceptibly.

"Colonel, we have an incoming transmission from Watchpoint: Elysium," Stella warned.

"Put it on the speaker," Shepard ordered.

An imperious voice rang on everyone's earbuds: "Incoming Alliance forces, this is major general Aleksandra Zaryanova on Watchpoint: Elysium. Our base is under heavy attack from Turian invaders. Disregard the assault on Illyria and proceed to relieve us immediately. Acknowledge at once."

Olivera, Martinsson, Aliyev and the rest of Shepard's team exchanged looks.

"Zarya, this is colonel Shepard. We copy your order to proceed to the Watchpoint. We're on our way. ETA… 11 minutes."

"Understood. Be advised, enemy aircraft is active nearby. Estimate squadron strength. Stay sharp. Out."

"Thanks for the heads-up. Out."

The same concern was on everyone's minds: _a civilian colony is under attack, and yet we are ordered to go and assist a fellow Starwatch force? By Zarya herself, no less?_

 _She must have a damned good reason to give that order,_ Shepard's eyes replied. Whether that damned good reason was the thing the Turians were after, they would know soon enough as well.

"Vulture flight, we're picking up multiple unknown contacts inbound on your position," Stella alerted her, confirming Zarya's warning.

"Unknown?"

"Their profile does not match any known craft."

The… object… depicted by the bulkhead screen was, effectively, radically different from anything they knew. It was a near-spherical flier, three apertures on its hull around a blood-red iris-like crystal, a pair of rectangular wings protruding from a rudimentary-looking armature enveloping the main body.

Kimo Lemetti, the Finn sniper that had fought next to her on the cargo bays of the _London_ over the skies of Pokhara, summarized everyone's reaction: "What have the Turians been up to?"

"I hope we don't get to learn in detail on the next few minutes," Shepard replied roughly.

"Brace for evasive maneuvers," Stella warned in her eerily calm voice.

On the flight deck, Tracer relinquished control of the Montauk to the AI, and strapped herself securely to the pilot seat before donning a face-obscuring helmet — and interfacing with one of the drone fighters.

Strangely enough, beneath the layers of fabric of her suit, she felt goosebumps racing all over her skin. She had almost forgotten the sensation.

It was a warning signal, but she smiled thinly.

"Alright, blokes. Let's play."

Outside the hull, a third of the escorting drone fighters clustered protectively around the two dropships, while the rest surged forward to meet the incoming enemy. Tracer steered her commandeered fighter port, not wanting to be on the receiving end of the initial barrage, then after interrogating the incoming enemy for range, she selected a piece of light air-to-air ordnance —no point on using up the heaviest weapons right away— and fired away. In this case, it was a hybrid munition, something halfway between a guided missile and a railgun slug; she did not expect it to inflict heavy damage on the enemy, it was more of a test of their barriers than anything else.

The attack was a solid hit, and the slug turned into incandescent vapor, but it came as no surprise when the enemy emerged through no worse for the wear. Lena noted this and the slugthrower went tight; Stella also noted this and the drones under her control did not repeat the exercise—

Then the attackers opened up, and the sky turned crimson with lancing beams. Three of the five drones comprising the vanguard received direct hits and exploded. The other two dodged and weaved around, then, as they came within range in turn, fired their guns, scoring solid kills. The fighting devolved almost immediately into a swirling melee, but there were more of the spherical attackers than Stella had drones to counter them—

—and this enemy was completely impervious to one of the mainstay weapons of the Alliance:

"Command, enemy craft is immune to jamming and electronic warfare."

" _Jolly good, Stella!_ " Tracer snarled on the flight deck, straining to maneuver behind the tail of one of the enemy craft while keeping track of the friendlies and enemies all around her and the craft she had to protect. Long gone were the days of using HOTAS controls; the current approach was to use sensor arrays embedded on the helmet to map signals from the brain itself to the controls and weapons, granting a degree of responsiveness the fighter pilots of yore had dreamed of.

And it was no secret that Tracer was the best fighter pilot there was. The enemy aircraft were faster, tougher and better armed than her drone, but the same could not be said about the quality of those flying them — and that was before taking into account her ability to slow down time. For a split-second, the enemy craft filled her gunsights—

—and Tracer could make a split-second last into an eternity. Which was not necessary this time around. A brief burst of cannon fire and the enemy flier was blotted from the sky.

But there was only one Tracer.

As the third spheroidal fighter plummeted towards the ground leaving a thick trail of smoke in its wake, the remainder started to shift their targets to gang up on this troublesome drone — though not to the point of letting the other craft prey on them. Still, that took some pressure off Stella and some omnics that had also commandeered fighters to assist—

—but eventually Lena realized the enemy simply was not going to let go, so after blowing a fifth enemy to bits she took a sharp turn away from the furball, hoping to draw some of the attackers away from the dropships—

—and it was a mistake. As one, her pursuers disengaged and turned around to once again join the melee. "Shite! Get me another fighter!"

"Transferring you. Please stand by." And then again she felt goosebumps, but for a different reason: "Alert. Enemy reinforcements inbound."

"Bloody hell, where are they coming from?! Shepard, we can delay them, but there's no way we can defeat another wave!"

On the passenger deck, Aaliyah brought up a feed from the _Thermopylae_ on her omni-tool, assessed her options, and without hesitation keyed her mic: "Zarya, this is Shepard, do you copy? We are under heavy attack by enemy aircraft, we cannot, repeat, cannot reach your position. Heading for alternate one. Is there any chance for you to bring a gate online, over!"

"Copy your negative," came the Russian's heavily accented voice. "We are currently running on auxiliary power so we cannot comply with your request, though some of our engineers here are working on that. In the meantime I advise you proceed to the local barracks and try to secure the tram station. You should be able to make your way here without hassle then."

"Roger that," she agreed, more calmly than she felt. The Montauk was heavily shielded and armored, but she could hear Tracer cursing profusely on the flight deck as she wrestled with the enemy fighters and she harbored no illusions about what would happen if the enemy reinforcements caught up with them.

"Maintain radio contact, and make haste. We are counting on you. Zarya out."

"Well, isn't that a vote of confidence," Aaliyah commented. She scanned the feed: apparently the assault on Illyria was little more than a diversionary strike, for the anti-aircraft batteries —pristine, deployed and alert— would have been reduced to cinders otherwise, and the colonial defense force was apparently well entrenched on the barracks, despite the raiders' attempts to dislodge or encircle them. "Stella, proceed to the barracks on Illyria!"

"Yes, Shepard."

Impatiently she turned to the map again. She felt the impulse to order her quartet of airborne troopers to stand by for immediate deployment the moment they were within the envelope of the friendly AA, but that would only get them killed by the fighters Stella, Tracer and her omnic crew were struggling to hold at bay.

And for now the air battle was stalemated, despite the numerical and qualitative superiority of the enemy, but the second wave of spherical attackers inched ever closer and Shepard could not bring herself to stop looking at the feed from the _Thermopylae_ — then she realized what she was doing and, with a vile oath, she put her omni-tool down. It was out of her hands. Everything she could do now was to trust Stella, Tracer and her omnic fellows. _When we make it out of here I'll buy them a… damn, what do you buy an omnic? Mineral oil?_

And then an urgent call turned her blood to ice: "Vulture 2 is hit! Vulture 2 is hit!"

"Move us in front of them to shield them!" Shepard ordered on the spot, then she demanded, "Vulture 2, damage report!"

"We got a hull breach and a coolant leak!" the pilot replied in a rush. "Whatever they got, it punched straight through our shields—our engineers are getting the leak under control, but another hit like that and we're toast!"

"Roger that," she growled. "Casualties?"

"We're all good, thank God for that."

"Stella, how long before we are within AA range?"

"Two minutes, thirteen seconds."

 _These are going to be the two longest fucking minutes of my life,_ she groaned, and suppressed a shiver as her mind completed the thought: _Supposing I get to live that long._ Only a scant half a dozen fighters were all that stood between them and annihilation, and the enemy outnumbered them two to one — without counting the second wave of attackers, now barely six minutes away. The _Thermopylae_ could not descend into the atmosphere to provide assistance. Tracer was doing a stellar job, but she was walking a very tight and slippery rope — just one misstep…

Then the idea flashed in her mind like a lightning bolt: "Everyone clear out the boarding ramp! Release the clamps holding the Bulwarks into place!" Then she turned to Brulirea and Lumiscant: "You think you can create a basket for them?"

The omnics stared at her, without understanding: "You want to toss them into the air?"

"Look at those guns!" Shepard yelled in exasperation. "They got more firepower than the rest of us combined! We need them pointed at those fuckers out there!"

Lumiscant nodded. "It won't hold for long, ma'am."

"I know. I'm sorry for them, but we can get them other frames. We don't have that luxury."

"No you don't," Brulirea accepted.

With dread driving her to work faster, Shepard followed the omnics' directions to help them fashion cages tethered to hardlight generators around the bulky forms of the Bulwark frames. "Ready! Clear the ramp!"

One of the Bulwarks turned its head to face her and beeped. It was a familiar sound.

It was strange that the omnic did not use a vocal processor to speak as usual, but Shepard was too stressed and worked up to think about that in detail. Still she felt guilty. "Sorry," she whispered. "I wish there was another way."

Then her heart skipped two beats when a voice rang on her earbuds, one she had last heard two decades back at Numbani:

"Don't worry. I'll get you down there."

Before she could say anything, the four Bulwarks slid out of the Montauk.

Shepard turned her head around. Anika Ziegler was standing, alone, at the edge of the ramp. They stared at each other.

Then Mercy's daughter turned away.

* * *

A cheer rose from the colonial troopers when the Montauks slowed down, made their final approach and softly released their Bulwarks and hardsuits, to complete their landing a scant fifteen seconds later under the protective umbrella of the anti-aircraft batteries. By then, the war machines were already moving, each of the four hardsuits paired with one of the huge siege omnics to screen it from enemy fire.

The Starwatch soldiers raced out of the dropships, splitting into fire teams to secure the landing zone and assist their heavy units — except for Shepard and Lena. The latter was leaning on the former as they walked painstakingly towards the fortified barracks compound.

"I'm colonel Aaliyah Shepard! Where's your commanding officer?"

"Here, ma'am!" A man rushed towards her. At once her onboard AI scanned the man's armor and printed on her HUD: lieutenant Léon Kerkerian. She could not see his face behind his helmet, but it was evident that he had recognized Tracer because he stood there in stunned surprise for a moment, but he quickly recovered: "Medic!" he yelled, then moved to assist Lena.

"I'm… I'm okay, thank you," she protested.

"No, Lena, you're not. See that she gets a little rest. We all owe her our lives."

The corpsman quickly took charge of the situation. "Absolutely, ma'am. We owe her our lives, too." The news spread like wildfire around the barracks. Shepard heard the voices: _Tracer is here_. But those close to her noticed that the Overwatch legend was overwhelmed with exhaustion. By unspoken agreement, the men, women and omnics there kept their distance, knowing that the best way to show their gratitude would be to let her rest.

"Now bring me up to speed. What the hell happened here?"

Kerkerian gestured skywards. "Well, ma'am, I take it that you already know what happened to the orbital defenses. Our comm buoys started blanking out on us at first. Then we lost the stations. We had already dug in for an attack, but…" The man shook his head. " _Ne sais pas._ I didn't think we would resist this long. I suppose we're still alive because the Watchpoint has taken the brunt of the assault." A sigh. "Still, they haven't made it any easier. Our defenses have held, but they've been probing us all the time for weaknesses ever since this started."

"Have you been in contact with Zaryanova?"

A nod. "We were, until last night, when we had to evacuate the tram station. Our land lines run through the tram tunnel. I wouldn't bet on the Turians not finding them. Even so we tried to report only as necessary. She's got her hands full, she does."

"I know. I have orders to relieve her ASAP. She's instructed us to retake the station and fight our way through." She took a deep breath. "You still got sensor feeds?"

"Some. They've been working really hard to keep us in the dark. If omnics weren't on our side…" Something in Kerkerian's voice told Shepard that this man, like many others, had not trusted synthetics until he had been forced to put his life on their hands.

She decided that it was none of her business. Not now, in any case. "Show me."

Like most military bases, the barracks was set on elevated ground, surrounded by an open field without any kind of structure or foliage that could serve as cover — for all purposes, a kill zone. The Turians had deployed some form of hardsuits of their own, given the half-dozen charred hulks that dotted the terrain around the base, but that was all they had to punch through, and it was clearly not enough.

But the good news ended right there and then. To get to the tram station, they had to cross that same no man's land, and then they had to fight their way through an urban area of tall buildings with balconies and hanging catwalks a smart commander could turn into a nightmare with careful placement of only a few snipers and some fireteams. The Turians had both, and theirs were a class act. She had seen them first hand.

Her first plan would have been to get a sense of what the enemy was up to before deploying hardsuits and airborne troopers. But not only she did not have any air support to speak of, barring a request for an orbital strike —something she would only do in the most desperate of situations, for an old joke with a grain of wisdom to it stated that if you were not willing to shell your own position you were not willing to win—: the enemy owned the skies and had very nearly shot them down, and while they were focused on the Watchpoint at the moment, she did not doubt that if she raised enough of a hell they would come back to ruin her day.

But that was her mission: raise enough of a hell to take some pressure off Zarya.

She clenched her jaw and fists. "Amari, Park and Ziegler, meet me on the barracks ASAP."

Fittingly, Layali Amari was slim, olive-skinned, oval-faced, black-eyed, and had a _wedjat_ tattoo under an eye, but those looks were all she had in common with Ana and Pharah: as combat injuries had piled up, she had been forced to completely replace her organic body for a prosthetic one. Unlike her progenitor and grandmother, she was neither affable nor warm. Unlike her friend and colleague Anika Ziegler, Layali had been unfortunate enough to be a youngster when her mother had died. The pain had caused her to withdraw into herself and become maniacally focused into her training as a way to handle her grief; initially distinguishing herself because of her natural talent, she had gone on to recreate the jumpjet infantry specialty: she could snipe like the best of them —and she actually seemed to enjoy it, as much as it could be said that she enjoyed anything—, but she had really made a name for herself as a line breaker. In close quarters, Layali was a nightmare.

Park Jung Hoon was one of the most recent products of Starwatch. He had no lineage to back his name, no sponsors had helped him along. He had earned his way into a frontline hardsuit out of brute competence. But the now retired Hana Song had admired his skills, and that commendation had been the starting point for an uninterrupted string of successes on the field. He was completely bald, with piercing emerald green eyes studying everything through the slits he had for eyelids.

The slim youth and the cold airborne trooper were accustomed to working together, and Shepard had grown used to relying on them when the situation called for serious measures. Such was the situation now as she laid it out before them:

"I don't like it one bit," she manifested, "but Zarya has much bigger problems than we do. I don't have to tell you what we have to do about it."

"So you want us to cover you from above." Layali's comment was flat.

"And you fear that will call their air support down on us." Park completed Amari's idea.

"The whole colony is well within range of the anti-aircraft batteries here, but I don't like to rely on them. We haven't put them to the test against the enemy fliers. And besides, a single orbital strike is everything it would take to blow them to bits."

" _Excusez-moi,_ " Kerkerian raised a hand, feeling way out of his depth, but also convinced he had a legitimate point, "but if the enemy could do that, why haven't they done that already?"

"I don't know," Shepard answered uneasily. "I'm dead certain the attack on the colony was only a diversion. I mean, most of their strength is focused on the Watchpoint."

"Which begs a question," Tracer pointed out as she walked in: "Why? What are they after?"

Shepard rolled her eyes but said nothing. Lena could be insufferably stubborn, but considering how melancholic she had been in recent times, in this one case it was actually a good thing.

"I can't answer that," Kerkerian admitted. "There had been some unusual traffic coming and going out of the Watchpoint recently, but what was it about, I don't know."

After a brief silence, Layali stated dryly: "You don't need our advice, ma'am. You've already made up your mind."

Shepard and Ziegler exchanged a glance, then she looked at Tracer. The colonial lieutenant noticed the looks and got a glimpse of the weight on the colonel's mind:

"Ma'am, you've already saved our lives by coming," the man said quietly. "If we are needed, we will go. Besides, this is _my_ home, Turians be damned."

Aaliyah bowed her head, closed her eyes, and committed herself. "We depart in ten minutes. Leave behind just enough men to secure the installation. Everyone else is coming with us."

* * *

Credits and thanks:

\- As it has been the usual for a while now, **BrokenLifeCycle** contributed priceless ideas and played the Devil's advocate when necessary.  
\- Aaliyah's self-admonition to keep her thoughts on a leash was lifted from _Imperium Thought for the Day._ I don't know if it's **40k** canon.  
\- Maxim #20 of _The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries_ from **Schlock Mercenary** was quoted here.


	15. Citadel: A Soldier's Pain

Elysium surface - Illyria City

"It's a go," Shepard declared, faintly nauseated, then more firmly: "Park, push forward!"

"You got it, ma'am. Goliath 2, on me. Goliaths 3 and 4, right flank."

In addition to their complement of four hardsuits, Park now had under his command half a dozen others belonging to Kerkerian's force. These were not as capable, being less mobile and lacking the jet boosters allowing for quick repositioning, but they still were heavily armed and armored, which meant protecting their Bulwark artillery group was their job — while he and team Goliath were free to support the assault.

The other side was, as Aaliyah had learned to expect, playing it smart. Pushed back across the kill zone by the storm of gunfire unleashed by the Bulwarks and Park's team, they had retreated within the urban area they had to traverse to reach the tram station. Now there were none of the enemy to be seen.

"Kerkerian and Martinsson, you're up next," she ordered her infantry elements. "Léon, keep your troopers behind the shields."

"Roger."

Both the colonial troopers and the Starwatch platoon followed after Park's Goliath team. Following advice from the locals, Shepard had already plotted their route. The Bulwarks and the hardsuits guarding them would advance along a boulevard flanked by tall buildings, with their objective on the other end of a half a kilometer run, so that they could provide long-range fire support. Kerkerian's and Martinsson's platoons would advance through side streets parallel to the boulevard to forestall any attempts at ambushing or flanking them. Amari's jumpjet infantry would be in reserve to deal with unexpected threats, whereas Genji and Tracer were to do what they did best — scouting ahead and preying on targets of opportunity.

 _What will they do?_ Aaliyah was trying to think like the enemy commander. Judging from what she had seen back at the barracks, they had anything between two scores to a hundred troopers deployed. They had more of those walker mechs, at least two. Their trump card, of course, was their air support. She had chosen the ways into the urban area to minimize exposure, hoping that to make their targets difficult to approach would expose the fliers further to anti aircraft fire.

"XO, we've picked up something coming straight at us," Anderson spoke suddenly on her earbuds. "We must abandon station to engage. You're on your own for a while."

"Copy that, skipper. Give 'em hell."

"You too. Stay safe."

A nod, a deep breath, then she walked towards Anika Ziegler. "I need to have a word with your mom."

Anika was automatically uncomfortable, but acquiesced. "Of course, ma'am, why would you ask me for permission?"

Shepard shrugged. "Privacy, I suppose." After a moment of interfacing, her omni-tool projected the face of the original Mercy as she had seen it back on the Moon:

"Hello, colonel. I'm glad to see you made it safely."

"Thanks to you, in part," Aaliyah noted. "We need you again now."

"I'm listening."

"I need you to fill in for Stella."

The AI stared at her quizzically, then frowned. "I'm not sure I'll be good at it. I'm a facsimile of a person who was trained to protect, not to kill." Then a nod. "I'll try."

Despite the tension of the moment, Shepard's thought processes paused momentarily as the strangeness of the situation took her. "We all have to put up with things we don't like, Angela. You just helped saved us all. Do it again."

Aaliyah knew it was an AI, not the original Angela Ziegler. The AI knew it too. That did not stop the smile on the rendered face from being almost dazzling.

"Don't worry, colonel. I'll get you back home."

"We're very much counting on it."

At once Mercy brought up a real-time representation of the battlefield. Goliath elements had taken positions in cover on both sides of the boulevard. Kerkerian's platoon was following Park at close range, taking pains not to show themselves. Martinsson, as her deputy, was leading the Starwatch force, keeping only a few steps behind the other Goliath pair.

Now engineers on both platoons were deploying scout drones. That was Genji's and Tracer's call to proceed; the former simply vanished where he stood, while the other darted away at her customary breakneck pace.

"Stay sharp, you two," Shepard admonished them. "I don't like this." The enemy was being surprisingly passive. No traps, no harassing, no sniping. Of course, that only meant the shit would hit the fan that much harder.

" _Wakarimasu._ "

"Aye, luv."

Seconds trickled by almost reluctantly. With the spheroidal scout drones slowly clearing the streets, the troopers followed a few steps behind, leapfrogging between covers, with motions seemingly drawn from an evil dance. The city was deathly silent and still, which was in a way a blessing — the mere idea of having to fight on streets crowded by panicked civilians made Shepard's skin crawl. If there was one point all colonies had gotten inflexible on after Pokhara, that was the evacuation protocols: huge shelters were built underneath every major building, ready to seal themselves off from the surface for weeks if need be.

An alert appeared on her HUD: Park and Kerkerian had reached the first of three predefined checkpoints set for both platoons. Martinsson was almost there as well.

Then Genji whispered, "I have spotted the enemy."

At once Shepard switched her view to the feed from the cyborg ninja's eyes. It was a part of the boulevard the Bulwarks would have to traverse. The raiders were leaving, with motions not too dissimilar from those of her own team, a store they had apparently planned to use as a strong point. She counted eight of them. Three of them remained vigilant, watching out for enemies, while the rest evacuated the position—

—and at once one of the sentries fixated his sight on Genji's position. Now the latest advancements on thermoptic camouflage would be put to the test: the Turians' superior visual acuity made them very hard to deceive with such devices, and a lot of work had been done since the First Contact War to address that problem.

And, apparently, all that research had paid off, for the sentry soon looked another way.

 _They're retreating?_

Somewhere a high-powered rifle boomed. Immediately afterwards Tracer warned, still far ahead of the vanguard: "Sniper on the catwalks! Don't get caught!"

Behind Shepard's group, Amari noted Lena's position. "Try to keep it busy."

"Oh, sure thing. I just love getting shot at," Tracer replied wryly. Dodging railgun rounds was no small feat: she had to max out her chronal accelerator and almost completely stop time to see them. But then, it became a horribly unequal game of tag: Lena could run circles around her assailant —both figuratively and literally—, though getting close enough to actually shoot back was another matter.

Layali switched her ferrofluid cannon for the venerable rocket launcher, fed it the sniper's location, pointed it skywards, and fired a single shot. The missile climbed upwards, then eventually stopped its ascent, arced down, and only then did the sophisticated piece of ordnance look up where it had to go. Then its booster engine lit up again, and the warhead became nothing but a simple, inert rod of metal.

Which exploded with a resounding boom on impact.

Ineffectively, as it would turn out: "It's a miss! Sniper is moving and relocating!" Tracer alerted.

"More enemy forces on the move," Genji warned. "They seem to be retreating towards our target."

In her gut, Shepard felt that a choice had to be made then and there, and she hoped it was the right one: "Press forward! Park, start the attack on the station! Bulwark team, get in position!"

"Yes, ma'am. Goliaths, two-pronged assault! Layali, watch our backs!"

"We're on the move," Amari reported tersely.

Tracer and the Turian sniper traded shots as Lena pounced from place to place, trying to get closer, while at the same time looking every which way for another sniper standing by to support her foe — and that caution stood her in good stead when she did spot the shooter, way too early for the Turian to react. This one, however, was perched on a low balcony, where she could reach him. There was time neither for subtleties nor mercy: a blink, two point-blank bursts, and the shooter was ground to mincemeat. "Scratch one sniper, another still on the loose!"

"Approaching primary target," Genji reported. "Enemy heavy armor unit in sight!"

What the ninja had dubbed 'heavy armor' was a walker, not too different from D-Va's armor in concept — though where the hardsuit was an exquisite balance of agility, toughness and firepower, this one was ponderously slow. No doubt it could absorb a lot of fire, and the huge cannons it had for arms proclaimed it could return it in kind. Of notice, though, was the huge transparent canopy-like cockpit — it was a _glaringly obvious_ weak point, and that initial observation invited another check;: the Turians did not make obvious mistakes, so probably the cockpit was not as vulnerable as it appeared at first glance.

"Take it out," Shepard ordered automatically.

" _Wakarimasu._ "

A red warning signal lit up on Aaliyah's HUD, then Mercy spoke urgently: "Shepard! It's the _Thermopylae!"_

"What?"

The AI wasted little time with explanations and simply replayed the distress call she had picked up—in Stella's voice: "Colonel Shepard! I'm launching all the escape pods towards the colony! We've taken catastrophic damage and the ship won't hold together!"

Her blood turned to ice, and her perception of time slowed noticeably, to the point of stretching out Kerkerian's loud warning against ambushers—

A terrible metallic screech seared through everyone's ears.

Aaliyah stumbled, momentarily staggered, then a shadow blotted the sun.

For a dreadful, eternal second, the sounds of the battle and the reports of her subordinates became even more distant. Her eyes were fixated on the huge silhouette that was slowing down its descent into the atmosphere, an obscenely large mass of black and purple with articulated _tendrils_ stretching out around a huge maw—

—and then a red spark blossomed in that maw. Instantly the memories of Pokhara rushed back into her mind—

—but she could not even scream a warning now. A blinding line of red light erupted from the maw—

—to cut a swathe through the buildings on the Watchpoint.

It was a scene to instill terror into many a heart, but far from it, she only found her resolve restored: "MOVE! ZARYA NEEDS US! MOVE! MOVE!"

Goaded by the knowledge that their leader was in danger, the Starwatch soldiers pressed on. There was a whistling sound, and a shape of steel and blue was briefly seen before something landed with a thunderous slam right in the midst of the squad attacking Kerkerian's platoon. It was Layali Amari, and she was proving why she was worthy of her blood. She had swapped her long-range weapons for submachine guns, and with ruthless precision she gunned down the stunned Turians that still had yet to come to their senses—

—but that did not take long, and out of the initial ten, the four survivors drew their PDWs and melee weapons—

—to no avail. Not only her suit was a walking arsenal, it was outfitted with multiple omni-tools, which with only a mental command would fashion short-lived blades that were everywhere at once — and the thrusters could be creatively used to lend crushing strength to her blows—

—or, in the case of the last standing Turian, to emulate Reinhardt himself to trip the enemy and have it smashed against a wall.

Kerkerian and his men had one brief instant to feel both stunned and horrified at the grisly spectacle of Layali covered in blue blood—

—before there was another terrible screeching sound, another lancing light, and a low rumble as the huge bulk of the strange starship touched down right on top of the main tower of the Watchpoint complex.

That only drove Shepard's men to fight on even more relentlessly. Layali jumped into the skies again to rejoin her squad, and using the buildings for concealment they switched to their long-range weapons to pick off targets of opportunity. Genji had taken advantage of his thermoptic camouflage to plant a pulse bomb on the enemy mech, causing it to explode spectacularly, and had again retreated out of sight before other Turians had come forth to investigate. Tracer had found a way to the rooftops and was hunting after enemy lone snipers.

But the enemy was recovering from the onslaught quickly, and they had dug in around the entrance to the tram station — so when both Martinsson's and Kerkerian's platoons finally broke cover out of the street and into the square next to the station, they were received with a barrage of firepower that no barrier could resist for long. Park's team tried to shield the infantry as they backed away, but at a severe cost to themselves — out of the four assault hardsuits, only two managed to retreat to cover. The other two pilots tried to send their self-destructing mechs right into the heart of the enemy defense after ejecting, but clearly the defenders had anticipated this maneuver and redeployed to alternate and equally well dug in positions, rendering the attack ineffective.

" _Scheisse!"_ Schreieder, the shieldbearer charged with protecting Kerkerian's troop, swore out loudly, then reported: "Shepard, we cannot break through that line by ourselves."

"Roger. Bulwark group, you're up!"

Bulwarks were none other than Bastion mechs, upgraded and updated by the team of engineers that had succeeded Torbjörn. Bastions had a grim reputation, being responsible for much death and destruction during both Omnic Crisis. Bulwarks, on the other hand, were next to unheard of on Earth, for Starwatch deployed them only in colonies. They were, however, no less dangerous than their ancestors, veritable Swiss Army knives — as recon mechs, they could fight next to hardsuits; as sentry units, a single one could unleash a storm of gunfire to grind entire companies into meat on instants.

And as self-propelled guns, they were siege breakers. They could alternatively shoot explosive ordnance, or fire a ferrofluid cannon powerful enough to inflict serious damage on a small starship — and that was exactly how Shepard had used them against the fighters that had very nearly killed them all.

And she did not expect they would have anything that could stand up to four Bulwarks. In this she was right. The first explosion sent several raiders flying in pieces amidst a cloud of debris and blue ichors. The next two hits were equally deadly. Thrown into disarray, the enemy tried to withdraw deeper within the station, but their assailants were alert to this and raked their ranks with small arms fire.

"Keep pushing!" Shepard encouraged between bursts. "We almost got them—!"

Mercy interrupted urgently: "Shepard, we have fliers inbound!"

"THEN GET MOVING!" She roared. "They can't hit us inside the station!"

It would not prove easy. She caught glimpses of huge shapes moving amidst the dust, and three walkers ponderously broke cover. They locked in on the shieldbearers and opened up at once. Both Martinsson and Schreieder reacted fast, deploying bubble shields, but against that kind of firepower, those defenses could have been as well made out of paper. Shepard caught a glance of the German trying to keep his barrier up before multiple rounds burst through it. The raiders seized the opportunity and rained a storm of blue tracers on Kerkerian's platoon.

Solid beams of yellow light pierced through the walkers as the Bulwarks switched to their anti-armor weapons, but the distant thunder of large guns filled the air, and Aaliyah realized that the enemy fliers were within range of the anti-aircraft batteries and these were engaging them. Time had ran out.

But all that stood between them and their goal was a thin line of Turian troopers, and Shepard was damned if they were going to stop her from getting her men to safety. Activating her own squad-shield, she readied her hardlight projector and raced forward. Alarms rang on her ears as the shield was quickly degraded by the raiders, but all she needed was to get within melee range. As one, the Starwatch platoon and the surviving colonial troopers charged after her, and the killing became swift and cruel.

Aaliyah did not bother to check all the enemies were dead: she gestured at Martinsson, who at once redeployed her squad to secure the entrance to the station. Then she glanced at Anika, Amari, Genji and Tracer, who needed no directions to race within the station. Only when they reached the docking platform and found it empty did she allow herself a brief respite: "Installation is secure!"

"Understood, colonel," Mercy noted. "We're good, but we cannot reach your position. Enemy fliers are raining fire all around us. You're on your own."

"Copy that," she acknowledged huskily. A part of her wanted to know how many of her crew and Kerkerian's force had survived, but the rest of her wanted to deal with that concern later, especially since Zarya still needed their help.

"We're in the control center," Brulirea informed. "There is a tram coming here from the Watchpoint."

"Raise them."

"Yes, ma'am."

Instants later, her omni-tool was filled with Mila Palukhina's anguished face: " _Shepard'yeva_? Is that you?"

" _Da, tovarich,_ it's me. The station is secure. What's your status?"

"Damn Turians are all over us! The Watchpoint is lost, we had to take the last tram out. We got boarded, Zarya and the rest of our crew are holding them at bay, but I don't know if we'll make it there!"

Quickly Shepard looked around her: she had the Overwatch elite on her, plus Park and another hardsuit, and Amari plus all three of her airborne troopers. There were others, but the jumpjet squad could only carry four. "Hold on, _tovarich,_ help is on the way!"

Layali at once grasped what Aaliyah meant and nodded. "We can do it."

"Good." _That spares me from ordering you to find a way._ It was no idle comment, though: there were a hundred things that could go horribly wrong, for the tram was a maglev train and came in blindingly fast, but there was no time to dwell on those. She had to trust Amari and her team could get her there. "Brulirea, we're going to need help getting aboard that tram."

"We'll manage that for you, ma'am."

That the airborne troopers occasionally would have to carry others with them was nothing strange; they trained for the eventuality and were equipped to deal with it. It took them scarcely less than a minute to get their comrades tightly strapped to their suits.

"Everyone ready?" Shepard asked. She got thumbs up and yeses from Genji, Tracer and Martinsson in return. Anika, having independent flight capability thanks to her Valkyrie suit, would follow them on her own. "Alright. Amari, you're the boss."

Behind her, Layali nodded dryly. "Hold on tight. It won't be a nice ride."

It felt like a mule had kicked her in the back as the airborne trooper jumped forward. When Shepard had been promoted to full colonel, she had had to undergo mandatory training on all the Starwatch specialties still unknown to her up to that point, and one of those specialties was Amari's role. She had hated every second of it. Unlike Tracer and Pharah's daughter, her piloting skills were just barely good enough for her to get the handle of a Kodiak. On a good day.

What Amari was doing now was far and beyond anything Aaliyah could ever accomplish in her stead. The tram tunnel was wide enough for two trains, but little else, and not exactly tall. One tiny mistake and they would bounce and ricochet themselves into thin red paste—but Layali and her subordinates were not worried about the constrained space in the least. Shepard briefly wondered if Amari was enjoying herself. Probably not. Someone else would have joked that woman had a solid block of ice on her chest, but Aaliyah knew her and appreciated her enough not to make that pun.

Lumiscant alerted her: "You're approaching the train now, ma'am. We'll slow it down for you."

"Not a moment too soon."

"Good luck to you, ma'am."

"Thanks."

It was not a passenger train, as Shepard had expected it to be but a cargo train instead. Quite likely they had had to take whatever they had at hand.

As if on cue, the front loading ramp opened. Aaliyah's blood chilled when she caught a glimpse of all the people packed inside: "Here we go, ma'am, get ready!" Amari warned.

There was no easy way to go about it. Or so it appeared. The railcar was packed full with people, but nonetheless Layali and her crew managed to put their passengers inside the car without hurting anyone. That they did so in quick succession only underscored just how good those airborne troopers were. Shepard made a note to write a citation for Amari when this was over.

Palukhina approached her: "Where's Zarya?" Shepard asked on the spot.

"On the rear cars!"

Aaliyah merely nodded and stormed off. Tracer darted ahead of her, while the rest of her troopers followed. They passed car after car crammed with wounded and crates—

"What's this?"

One of the last cars was mostly empty, except for a tall monolith within a hardlight shield. Green and turquoise lights pulsed on its sides.

"This is what they're after," Anika realized. "It's a… a Prothean relic!"

Abruptly the door on the other end of the car opened. Zarya almost collapsed on the floor, then the half a dozen troopers that came behind her covered her and helped her back to her feet.

Without being told, Anika flew right next to the Starwatch commander, while Shepard and the rest of her team moved in to screen them. Pieces of Zarya's armor were missing, and cuts and bruises covered her exposed skin.

"What happened?" Aaliyah asked, as gently as she could manage.

" _Shepard'yeva…_ They got… biotics with them," Zarya panted, and winced in pain. "Their leader… we met him once, in Pokhara. It's one of the… the Turians we rescued. He's… he plowed through my men!" Anger flashed on her face, and it seemed to restore some vigor to her exhausted frame.

"The Turians we rescued—" Then the words of one Garrus Vakarian flashed in her mind:

 _If someone could survive down here, it would be Saren Arterius… you would know of him eventually._

As if to confirm Zarya's words, the door was torn out of its hinges and pulled away by some invisible force, then a torrent of gunfire poured in. "Stay behind me!" Shepard shouted as she deployed her squad-shield and retaliated with a hardlight blast. Martinsson moved in to join her—

—there was a pulse of blue and purple light, and a thunderous explosion shattered Shepard's shield and sent her flying with such violence that she crashed through the hardlight barrier—

—and the Prothean monolith suddenly went alive. An invisible force kept her suspended in midair right in front of the relic.

" _Shepard'yeva!_ " Zarya saw this happening, and lunged after her.

It was a mistake.

The black orb of a singularity trapped her. Helplessly she floated and turned around, to see the Turian leader weaving his hands until they both were ablaze with blue-white light—

—and then, both toroids collided with the singularity. The detonation sent a shockwave that knocked almost everyone unconscious and nearly sent the railcar out of the rails.

Anika, in the back of the car, had escaped the worst of it, but was not spared what came next, as the Turian cyborg directly reached for the limp, bloody Zarya—

—who was not so limp after all. A viselike grip caught on the metal limb, and the Russian pulled the Turian down in a perfect wrestling maneuver her attacker did not see coming. Twisting her legs around his neck, she reached for her knife, and hacked downwards with her every ounce of remaining strength—

The blade buried itself on the left eye of her attacker.

Her assailant twisted his head in an impossible angle —snapping the blade as he did— to glare at her insolently with his remaining good eye, then with no apparent effort he extricated himself from her grip, lifted her by the collar of her armor—

—and only then seemed to notice Shepard suspended in front of the monolith.

The Turian let out a furious bellow. With immense strength, he slammed Zarya against the wall of the railcar one, two, three times, then he flung her against Shepard. There was an explosion of green lightning, and both women crumpled to the floor. The Prothean relic was reduced to a smoking ruin.

There was a moment of deathly stillness as the Turian cyborg breathed heavily, stomped on the floor twice in frustrated rage, and stormed out the same way he had come.

* * *

"How is she?" Anderson asked quietly.

Both Palukhina and Ziegler shook her heads. The latter's eyes were bleary with tears.

"She won't make it," Anika whispered, her voice quivering. "Her wounds are too severe. And even if she was in shape to be cyberized, she would have none of it."

Zarya's makeshift bedding was surrounded by people. Lena Oxton, Genji Shimada, Layali Amari, Mila Palukhina, Anika Ziegler and David Anderson were some of those.

"She fought omnics for decades," Anderson agreed in a low voice. "Becoming something like that would go against all she stood for."

Silence gathered, only broken by the sounds of the life support machinery that kept Zarya clinging to life.

"And her?" The CO of the _Thermopylae_ turned to Shepard.

"We… can't say, _tovarich komandir,_ " Palukhina answered haltingly. "She doesn't have anything other than a mild concussion, but her brain exhibits patterns of anomalous activity. That relic did something to her, but we don't know what it was."

Tracer found she had no tears to shed. She could not. All that adrenaline and sweat and blood had been spent… hoping that the outcome would be other than this. The defeat was so utterly soul-consuming that it totally drained her of any ability to express her pain.

Her eyes veered alternatively between the agonizing Zarya and the unconscious Shepard, never staying on either for long. And all the while her mind was catatonic, seeing everything red and locked in a loop she could not break…

 _No, no, no, no, NO! Not YOU! Of all people, NOT YOU!_


	16. Citadel: Snipe hunt

Freeport 74 - Attican Traverse

The Drell guard beckoned Amélie forward. "Put the bag down and stand on the square. And hold still. You don't want to start over from the beginning."

Widowmaker obeyed. The sentry drones went over her and her luggage. She knew they would spot her rifle and sidearm but Miranda had forewarned her: _not carrying weapons openly here invites trouble._

The drones hovered away. The guards pointed their weapons away but still did not relax. "State your business here."

 _Drell have eidetic memories,_ Miranda repeated in her mind. _They will remember everything you say, down to the last word and gesture, so you would better be honest._

So she replied, "Following a lead on a bounty."

The lizardlike humanoid frowned. "Freelancer?" she asked.

Again Amélie was prepared for this. The hardest thing was controlling her accent. "No. I work for Hades Security. You can examine my credentials once the scan is complete." She gave the guard a coolly wry look: _I wouldn't like to start over from the beginning._

This earned her a grunt. "Hades, yes. We'll have to go through those. Who is your target?"

"A hacker and smuggler."

"What's her name?"

Amélie smirked. "For which time of the day?"

The guard understood. Still she warned her: "If your quarry is here and you capture her, we have to take a look at her."

A stare. "And not a share of the bounty?"

"That goes without saying," the guard said, then an electronic beep rang. "You're clear. Head on to customs. An officer will have a look at your documents."

Once she was through, Amélie made her way to the lounge and bar next to the docking bays, and sat quietly to wait for her partners to join her. When the VI popped up and prompted her for a drink, she blinked in surprise: _they have sparkling wines this far?_ She dismissed the offer, though, and settled for some mildly citrus-flavored water.

Eight minutes later, Reaper joined her, then Miranda followed after another six minutes. The assassin was again clad in nondescript black powered armor. Only Amélie could know Reyes was not comfortable without his mask; the man's jet-black eyes were cold as ice.

"What is it with these people and their fixation for living on rocks in the middle of nowhere?" Reaper asked morosely.

"That's exactly the point," Miranda noted. "If we had a hard time getting here, so would those wanting to get their hands on any of the locals."

Amélie stifled a groan. 'Getting there' had meant making half a dozen jumps and traveling for almost three days, and since they were keeping a low profile they had had to hire out multiple ships along their way.

"This lead would better pay off," she said simply.

There were many bars and pubs close to the docks, which was of course only logical — and at a time surprising: unexpectedly, Freeport 74 had a lot of traffic. Their initial contact there served drinks on one of those pubs, and Miranda led Lacroix and Reyes into one such place. Most of the tables were taken, so she went to the counter — and looked for the barwoman: "Orila?"

"Who wants to know?" The slender Asari turned around to face the inquirer.

"Lisk sends his greetings," the brunette said obliquely.

For a moment, the blue-skinned girl stared in puzzlement, then she blinked twice and exclaimed: "That big old lizard sent you? I hope you've come to pick up his tab."

It was part of the cost of doing business. She tapped her omni-tool a few times. "I'm sure he'll appreciate the surprise."

"Supposing he doesn't get himself killed before returning here," the barwoman quipped acidly. "Now what do you want?"

"Lisk had asked your boss to do some digging around on someone for him. Ten-odd standard days ago. He wanted it done smoothly, though."

Lacroix and Reyes, in the meantime, kept a pretense of disinterest while looking guardedly at their surroundings. There were aliens of all shapes and species on the bar. Neither of them were experts at reading aliens, but Amélie did her best effort. While a few were outright unkempt, most of the patrons wore passable clothes or functional suits, nothing flashy. The place was adequately lit — it was not one of those dark dens where all kinds of shady deals would take place. It had none of that charm either. And most of the patrons sat alone, staring idly at the large screen set in the wall opposite the counter, in a fashion she had seen before in similar places on Earth. These were drunkards and derelicts gripped with melancholia, sitting on that bar because they had nowhere else to go.

And yet there was still something wrong. Long familiarity and years of working together meant a gesture and a look was everything Reaper needed to interrogate her: _You feel it, right?_

 _Yes. Someone is watching us,_ she agreed.

Orila had expected a passphrase, and got it when she heard the request for smooth work. "Oh. Well, let me see if Rupil left something for him," the barwoman replied with unease. She reached for a tablet computer below the counter and read some ciphered text neither former Talon operative could understand. "Oh, yes, here, this." She forwarded the decrypted contents to Miranda. "Tell Lisk there's other people around after this slicer," the Asari said nonchalantly, then as another patron approached, she moved on to take his order: "Yes? What will it be?"

Lawson walked away, with Reaper and Widowmaker in tow. The Cerberus officer was mildly annoyed that the Asari had made such an elementary mistake as saying out loud something about their target, but there was nothing she could do about it.

"She's alerted someone," the man said with that deep, unnerving voice of his.

"Quite likely," Miranda agreed warily.

"I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect the opposite here," Amélie commented, her pitiless yellow eyes very alert now.

They walked through the corridors, eventually ending in an open market square crowded with people. Miranda trusted her security to her fellow agents while she sifted through the information she had been passed on.

"So what have you got?" Reaper asked huskily.

"Nothing solid," was the reply, slightly more annoyed than before. "A half dozen likely places to start looking or asking questions, twice as many aliases. No videos or pictures, not even a poor quality snapshot."

The man snorted in amusement. "It's her alright."

"What about the people after her?" Amélie asked.

There was more material on those: fresh pictures, customs logs. It took some ten-odd seconds for Miranda to gather enough for an answer, though: "Newcomers, too. Asari, Drell and Salarians. They appear to be mercenaries, but they don't belong to any of the large syndicates. Or at least that's what their documents say."

"How convenient for them," Reyes snarked.

Amélie just kept on walking while her brains mated what she had been told about each alien species with expected battlefield roles. _The blueskins will have to go first…_

The Cerberus officer was analyzing the data. The information about their target was scarce — no other word. The half-dozen locations all were on the most unsavory and violent part of the Freeport, a place called the Warrens, for it was infested with vorcha. Her mind went back to Ilios and the extremely few hints that their operatives had been able to uncover there, and once again she found herself wishing that she had better intel, but, weak as it was, that was all there was.

"So who's first on our friendly visit list?" Again the cold snark.

Instead of replying, Miranda sent both Lacroix and Reyes the details on their next contact: a volus currency trader and loan shark, his name Taron Von. As such, he was one of the most universally hated persons on the Freeport, but he had never been caught red-handed on anything — and besides, the Cerberus lieutenant thought, he probably would have bought out everyone who was in position to threaten his interests.

"Some charming fellow," Widowmaker quipped humorlessly.

"We rarely get the chance of picking who to work with," Miranda replied, as staid.

"Do we ever?" Reaper asked rhetorically. "He surely has a lot of goons."

"According to this, a fifth of the firepower of the station, barring the Warrens."

Amélie's lips curved in the barest half-smirk. "He doesn't rest easy at night."

The place where Taron Von ran his business was easy to spot: huge luminous signs commanded the view of the market, offering 'great rates' and 'one-time deals' for 'quick cash'. The quartet of heavily armed and armored Krogan mercenaries that stood guard on the main doors also was easy to spot, as well as the sentry guns and the cameras tracking their steps.

"Hello and welcome to Taron's," the Asari receptionist flashed her best smile at them. "I am Selyana. What is it that you need?"

Miranda skipped the pleasantries. "We're from Hades Security. We understand your boss has a lead on a bounty. Can we speak to him?"

The Asari shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry, but mister Von is a very busy man." She started tapping commands on her touch screen. "If you want, I can put up a request for a meeting—"

A voice interrupted her: "Let them in, Selyana… *hiss*… After taking precautions."

The receptionist stared briefly in confusion at the screen, thrown off by the sudden disruption of her routine. "Yes, mister Von, immediately." Then she turned back to Miranda: "You're welcome to see him, but you have to surrender your arms first."

"Sure thing." With motions quicker than sight Reaper drew his shotguns and aimed them—one at the woman, and another at the Krogan guards that had been caught completely by surprise. "Where do you want the first bullet?"

At once alarms rang. A side door opened and an Asari clad in full battle dress appeared, but a blue dot lit up over her left breast. "Anything moves, including your fancy turrets, and you'll watch this from the afterlife." Widowmaker did not blink. "If you actually believe in any kind of afterlife, that is."

Miranda closed her eyes and cursed their impetuousness. She had not moved. "We are not parting with our guns. Hades operatives do not recklessly kill honest merchants." The veiled insult did not escape anyone. "Only bounties who prove too difficult to handle."

The Cerberus agents and the guards squared off. For some very tense three seconds, nobody moved—

"It's alright," the voice of a volus spoke through the speakers. "Let them keep their weapons. It's nothing… *hiss*… you shouldn't be able to handle." There was a veiled reprimand on the tone, and a promise to deal with this failure later.

Reluctantly the guards holstered their guns. Reaper and Widowmaker still kept them up, looking for hints of an ambush, then slowly lowered them. The Asari bodyguard looked at them stonily, then motioned for them to follow her.

When they walked into Taron Von's office, Miranda understood why the volus had acquiesced: a heavy duty barrier surrounded his desk and seat, and half a dozen heavily armed mechs kept him company. "Welcome. Please be seated… *hiss*… Excuse me for not shaking hands. I would have to turn this off."

"No offence taken." The Cerberus officer was conciliatory, but firm. "We need information."

Von raised his head briefly. "I'm not a data broker, miss Sutherland… *hiss*… You're better off hiring out the Kizzik brothers for that."

"They would probably tell me the facts second-hand. I understand someone stole from you."

At once the volus' demeanor changed. "Yes. An important sum of credits… *hiss*… along with some sensitive information. I've already sent… *hiss*… a group of bounty hunters after the thief."

"We are after this slicer too. We also know our target is in the Warrens. We could fight our way in, but having someone who could get us in there would be useful."

Von was thoughtful for a few instants, then: "Retrieve the data stolen… *hiss*... and we're even. You can keep the credits as your fee. I guarantee it will be more than enough compensation… *hiss*… for your services. What you do with the culprit is your own business."

"Fair enough," Miranda agreed.

Taron tapped his own omni-tool a few times. "Silthea will escort you there."

* * *

Silthea was none other than the Asari mercenary Widowmaker had threatened with her sidearm. She had given them a withering look upon learning of her orders, and coldly gestured them to follow her.

The Freeport was a city floating on a void almost entirely isolated from the rest of the universe. The star orbited by the planetoid where it had been built was an ill-tempered white giant, and reaching it required jumping to a relay on a nearby star system and a long, slow trip thence.

But apparently there was no shortage of people wanting to live outside the boundaries of large galactic governments, Miranda thought, given the size of the place: it was about half as big as Omega. Security was all-pervasive there, though, unlike on the domains of Aria T'Loak: the red-clad guards were visible everywhere.

As they made their way towards them in sullen silence, she recalled the briefing on the Warrens. Not an official part of the station according to the ruling body of the Freeport, they had been originally nothing but some caves dug by a gaggle of vorcha, who had progressively expanded them as they multiplied. Now the place was the dark face of the port.

And, given the number of guards on the final checkpoint before getting into the Warrens proper, it was stubbornly minded on staying that way.

"You again?" The Turian lieutenant in charge bristled when he spotted the Asari.

"I'm glad to see you too, Vartus. I need to go in."

"Business?"

"These guests are after someone who stole from my boss. They're going to get it back." Her voice was laden with sarcasm.

The Turian appraised the 'guests.' "Humans? Oh well, it's your funeral, none of my concern." He gestured at a couple of Salarians to open the large hatch-like door. Powerful lights turned on. "It's busy there today."

"Isn't that news," Silthea quipped acidly.

"Curfew starts in five standard hours," Vartus warned. "If you're not back before then, the gate will stay closed and you'll be on your own."

"Understood," Miranda agreed.

As the huge blast door opened, the difference between the sections was immediately obvious: the station was relatively clean and well fitting, but the passageway before them was ramshackle and haphazard at best.

A gang of armed people was on the other side. A tall Krogan asked menacingly: "You kicking some people out into the slums, Vartus? Kind of you." He eyed Silthea lustily. "How nice to see you again. Where are you keeping the chains today?"

Beneath his coat, Reaper reached for his guns. Miranda gestured at him to stay put, but she was already preparing herself to unleash a biotic attack if it came to that.

"Somewhere where I won't use them on you, Wartoc. Piss off."

The gate started to close behind them. "Well, girl, too bad, this is our turf. There's the tax to pay, you know."

Silthea was instantly ablaze in blue fire, and at that point Miranda mentally sent her omni-tool a command to message Reaper and Widowmaker: _safeties off._

One of Wartoc's henchmen moved—but before he had finished raising his rifle to point it at their Asari guide, Reaper had already drawn his shotguns and pulled the triggers. The four-eyed alien's head blew in pieces.

"There's your tax," he spat mockingly. "Maybe you want to assess some transit fee as well?"

The Krogan looked at the dead Batarian next to him, then glanced at Reaper and grinned evilly. His jaws were full of serrated metallic teeth.

"You got a quad, human. It's been a while." He turned around to leave. "You got until curfew to do your business here. Once Vartus locks the gate you're meat."

That said, he barked an order and turned around to leave. His ten-odd thugs followed.

Reyes holstered his weapons. "That didn't end the way I'd expected."

Silthea flushed. "Wartoc is going to tell every merc and hood about you. You'll be lucky to last those five hours."

Amélie scowled. "Then we'd better move. Lead on."

The Warrens were, as Miranda had come to expect, a labyrinthine, run-down slum, surprisingly similar to some of the worst shanty towns on Earth; she was reminded of some pictures she had seen of the Kowloon walled city before its demolition. Not only the dregs of the port dwelt there; there were also open markets there, peddling fenced or downright illegal goods and services for the disreputable.

As hackers would provide some of these services, it made perfect sense that one of the places Orila's information had provided hints on was an unsuspecting door on one such market. There would be, however, a complication:

"Great. Someone beat us to it." The drab olive-painted door was already open, and three people guarded it: a Drell, an Asari and a Salarian, all loaded for bear.

The Asari frowned, but at length she made up her mind and informed Miranda, "That door is one of the ways into the Scrapper's emporium."

"Enlighten us," Reaper asked mockingly.

"A Turian, he runs most of the gunrunning business here. He's been forced to set up shop here after Aria T'Loak put a bounty on his head."

"That gives us a perfect opening," the Cerberus officer stated. "We're here to buy some guns."

"That's your business. I'm not paid to risk my neck for you."

"No one pretended otherwise," Miranda quipped without looking, as her eyes were scanning the surroundings for a backup team or sentries disguised in the crowd. "Though I was thinking you probably don't want to return alone. Not with Wartoc's thugs waiting for a chance."

The Asari gave her a smoldering look, but said nothing.

They approached the door, expecting to be stopped by the three troopers, but that did not happen. Instead, they found themselves walking down a long hallway, with occasional openings on the sides leading to side rooms crowded with vorcha.

The hallway eventually led to a wide chamber, large enough to accommodate a hundred people. On the other end of it, the exit was barred by a group of Turian and Batarian thugs.

And right between the barrier and themselves, another group — again, a mixed coterie of Asari, Drells and Salarians. They were arguing loudly with the thugs guarding the tunnel.

"What is going on here?" Reaper asked warily.

"Apparently the Scrapper's henchmen won't let them through," Silthea muttered almost imperceptibly. "You got to get in there too?"

Miranda was at a loss. Orila's intel told her that a human hacker grossly matching her target's description had been employed by the gunrunner, but where she was exactly she did not know.

But then one of the Batarians spotted them: "About time! What the fuck happened with you? You were expected here yesterday!"

"Arranging for a secure transport that comes this far is not the easiest of tasks," Miranda answered smoothly. "You should know of all people. Khar'Shan is a long way off."

That earned her a grunt. "Well, get moving. The package is waiting." He barked a command, then the other thugs moved out of the way. The three Cerberus agents walked in as quickly as they could, wanting to avoid the scrutiny of the Drell from the other group — also onto their quarry, no doubt. It was a pointless effort, and they knew it; humans were not that common this far into the Traverse. But they tried anyway.

Silthea glared questioningly at Miranda, but she volunteered nothing. There could only be one explanation for their presence being expected—

The thugs stopped before a door, and after a few instants it slid open on its own.

"Your ride is here," the Batarian announced curtly.

"They took their time," a female voice spoke from behind a helmet as she hoisted a bag. The woman was very old, but wiry and lean, and the head beneath the helmet had half her scalp shaved clean, with two long metal stripes marking the spot where she had been grafted with neural implants.

 _Wait a minute here…_

Lacroix and Reyes exchanged a very brief and knowing glance.

If their quarry had recognized them, she did not give it away. "So where to?"

With an effort, Miranda boxed her frenzied worries about possible leaks on her organization to play along: "Our ship is back on the docks. We have to get out of the Warrens."

" _Perfecto._ Let's not waste any time then."

"Not so fast. We need something you're carrying."

At that moment, distant echoes of explosions reached them. The Batarian lieutenant at once turned on his heel: "What's going on?!"

"They jumped us! They just started shooting—" The omni-tool transmitted the sound of gunfire, then went silent.

Automatically, Widowmaker reached for her long rifle —an exquisite recreation of the Widow's Kiss—, leaned around the door, and activated her thermoptic camouflage. Reaper followed suit, drawing his shotguns: "What do you see?"

"They are trying to hold them back at the entrance." Something flared barely out of her sight, and the flash of another explosion would have blinded her if her scope had not automatically adjusted to compensate. At once fire started pouring down the corridor.

"Don't they know just _where_ they're trying to break into?" The Batarian lieutenant tapped her omni-tool and barked a series of orders — completely missing how his charge fastened her bag to her body and vanished into thin air. Neither Miranda nor Silthea did:

"Stay here! Where are you going?" the Asari shouted.

"You're wasting your breath," the Cerberus officer said bitterly. "That woman is exceedingly skilled at doing whatever she wants."

"There goes my payment," Silthea groaned through gritted teeth. "I hope this stupid assignment doesn't mean I get killed here."

Widowmaker was about to prove that concern moot. Talon had gutted almost everything there was in her to make room for the ultimate sharpshooter they wanted to create. As such, she had accuracy to rival that of a synthetic, and only needed to look at faces once to remember them — not to the point of a Drell's eidetic memory, but close enough.

So she did not hesitate when a Salarian briefly strayed through her sights. The weapon boomed, and the slug blew a perfectly round hole through the neck of her target. She quickly retreated out of sight and back into cover, and it was a smart decision, for soon afterwards a cascade of blasts raced down the hallway.

"Got anyone?" the Batarian asked.

The sniper nodded curtly. "One."

"Any way out of here other than this?" Miranda asked. She had not seen any other doors on that chamber, but probably the thug knew of one.

"None. We have to fight our way out."

Reaper merely said, "Let them come."

The thug laughed bitterly. "You've never been to the Warrens, human, right?"

Widowmaker put her rifle aside momentarily to reach for a small device on her belt, prime it, and throw it on the corridor. The recon droid was the size of a small orange, and she trusted it would not draw attention while shooters on both sides of the hallway exchanged fire.

"The attackers are good," she evaluated. They had repurposed the barriers to create some cover for them, and they were slaughtering both the vorcha and the Scrapper's troopers trying to get to them.

Miranda counted. Fifteen of them. "I don't like these odds."

"If we wait for them here we're dead," Silthea manifested.

Widowmaker did not trust the trick would work for a second time, but still she tried. This time, though, she had to lie sideways on the ground, lest some of the Scrapper's henchmen shot her from behind while she was invisible, but it was worth it. Again it took her only a split-second to acquire a target and blow a hole through her neck.

But then, as she again darted back into cover, something went blindingly fast right past her and down the corridor, leaving a blue trail on its wake, and momentarily the shooting ceased, only to be replaced by muted screams.

"This keeps getting better and better, shock troopers," the thug said nervously.

"Shut up and watch." Reaper strode into the hallway and turned into a cloud of living darkness. Some stray shots passed right through him, inflicting no damage — including Widowmaker's own booming rifle — and was over the makeshift barricade instants later—

One of the blue-skinned aliens turned ablaze. The cloud of darkness turned into an almost liquid stream and swerved to dodge the pull of a coruscating singularity, then wrapped itself around the alien's legs. There was a feminine scream as the alien fell to the ground, cut short when the wraith was over her. Blasts of electricity and more blue flashes followed, as the attackers tried to harm the malevolent phantom, or at least shield themselves from it—

—and, at last, one of the Asari managed to catch the cloud with a singularity. A veritable blizzard of gunfire and explosives rained on it, while some of the attackers moved to repel fire from Silthea and Widowmaker.

"We can't break through that, we have to retreat!" Amélie shouted.

Then, unexpectedly, all the lights on the walls and ceilings flashed once, then faded out.

The shooting also ceased.

The attackers looked at their weapons without understanding what was afoot—

One of the Salarians hiccupped loudly behind its helmet, and started to shake uncontrollably. His fellows looked on, without understanding, as the lanky humanoid struggled with his hands, emitting incoherent grunts and groans, and tried to raise his shotgun—

Then he shakily pointed the weapon at the Asari holding Reaper at bay and with a horrified scream pulled the trigger—while, at the same time, explosions ripped through the attackers—

The hall erupted in chaos as the raiders tried to acquire whoever was shooting at them and scrambled to get out of the way from their frenzied teammate, whose terrified screams rang as his weapon fired at them. Amélie wanted to seize the distraction, but her own rifle was also somehow jammed; she reached for her sidearm, but it was an ultimately futile attempt for another blast sent bodies flying—

And the old woman appeared right next to the Salarian, sidearm on her right hand and a grenade on her left. " _Hora de dormir._ " She raised the pistol and blew his head off without contemplations.

Silence gathered.

Without a care, Silthea paced forward and walked right up to their quarry, who with complete calm handed over her bag—

" _Attendez!"_ Amélie called, racing forward, having grasped too late what was going on—

—only to collapse on the floor on the spot, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Reaper staggered to his feet and watched without understanding for a moment. Then he noticed the limp body at Silthea's feet. The Asari was busy looking for something within the bag, then at last she fished out a memory core and punched it on the corresponding slot in her omni-tool.

"Great. The whole trip wasted."

Silthea stopped for an instant and gave him a wry, mischievous look by the corner of her eye.

"I wouldn't say that… _señor Reyes._ "

Only then it dawned on both Lacroix and Reyes who the Asari woman really was:

"You clever bitch."

'Silthea' clucked her tongue. " _No diga palabrotas._ " Her eyes went back to the feed from her omni-tool.

Amélie was dumbstruck. "Sombra…? Is that you? What-what—" Then she noticed it: "Where's Miranda?"

"Safe. I locked her into that room. I wanted some privacy."

"To what end?" Reaper asked sardonically. "Getting reacquainted?"

Sombra shrugged. "In part. It's been fifty years."

The sniper retraced their steps mentally, all the way back to their ship docking on the port.

"There is no sparkling wine here," she said quietly. "You were watching us. Every step of the way."

"And she likely fabricated the evidence that led us here," Reyes added. "What for?"

She put down her omni-tool and glared at them sharply. "Learn what Cerberus wants with me. And see first-hand what they have done out of you."

"'Out of us?'" Reaper repeated mockingly. "They haven't done anything 'out of us.'"

Amélie added, "Besides defrosting me."

Sombra stared at them. "I'll be the judge of that."

"And how do you plan to—"

"Boop!" she grinned mischievously, and tapped her omni-tool once.

"AHHH!" Reaper suddenly screamed in surprise as part of his body became smoky and intangible. His face disfigured with shock as he struggled to reassert control over his unresponsive parts:

"What—what have you DONE to me? LET ME GO!"

Her smirk became dangerous. "Who are you again, _compadre?_ " She asked derisively. "Gabriel Reyes? Reaper, is it, that you like others to call you?"

A snicker. She paced slowly and mockingly around the paralyzed ex-Talons.

"Reyes is dead, _hermano._ He has been dead for fifty-one years! _Eres un pedazo de chatarra._ A buggy, obsolete piece of _junk._ You ate Gabriel—and you _still think you're him?_ " 'Silthea' shook her head in amusement. " _Por Dios… pobre Ángela._ If she knew just how bad her initial prototype turned out."

She paused for a second and unloaded another barrage as she spotted the surprise and rage on his eyes: "Oh, no no no, you bad boy. What nasty thoughts you have. Your mom—oh no, wait, _está muerta también,_ I meant old Mrs. Reyes… who's also long dead now, _sí_ —should have taught him manners. What? Still surprised? You're a lump of malfunctioning nanites, you think I can't hack into them and control them? Not easy, though — I don't think Angela intended for the nanites to evolve like that."

Now Reaper not only was frozen still like some ghastly doll, he was also unable to talk, but his eyes were alight with murderous rage. Amélie could not move either, but she could still try to stop Sombra from snuffing them out: "But if he is a swarm of rogue robots… why hasn't he started eating everyone?"

Again she snickered: " _Qué chica más aplicada._ You know your grey goo, eh? Oh no, wait, _black_ goo in this case." Then she approached the insanely furious Reaper and stared at him in the eyes: " _Es la culpa._ Guilt can be a heavy burden. Isn't that right, _señorita Lacroix?_ Your friend hasn't learned any anger management. Blame Overwatch for cutting corners. That whole mess could have been avoided if they'd had a competent shrink."

Then she dropped the mocking act. "You have to give Mr. Reyes some credit — he wasn't a bad _hombre._ All he wanted was some recognition for himself. And his crew, _por supuesto,_ he was proud, but not too selfish. Not that it was undeserved, really."

After a deep breath she continued: "So now he is a lonely man —let's give him the benefit of calling him that and not a swarm of thinking robots—, unable to let go of the burden of his mistakes. He keeps going through the motions, doing what others ask of him when all he wants is for the pain to go away. He believes he could pull the plug anytime, but he feels that letting himself go without fixing everything he fucked up would be beyond wrong. You'd think thirty years would be plenty of time to reflect upon that. _Pero sale, y qué es lo primero que hace…_ he eats twenty people alive." A shrug. "Well, okay, _seamos justos. Tenía hambre._ A body has to eat."

She glanced briefly at her captive in the eyes. The fury had subsided somewhat — being slowly replaced by mortified angst instead. She nodded.

And suddenly Reyes found he could speak again: "Ahhhh… you-you-you—" There was a brief look of surprise as he noticed he had also regained control over his body. At once a surge of blinding rage exploded in his head and he almost pounced on the 'Asari'—

" _Adelante. Hazlo._ " She looked at him with blank eyes. But not so blank: a challenge was written on her face.

 _Prove me right._

But with an effort he brought himself back from the brink. "You… you always thought you had all the answers," he said slowly, "and the worst of it was that you were mostly right." He sat down where he stood.

Sombra smiled.

"You may be a bunch of old junk, but there may be some hope for you yet."

Very cautiously and in full view of the 'Asari woman,' Amélie reached for her rifle and sidearm and holstered them. "So the leak after the First Contact War…"

"That just came out wrong," Reyes answered. He sounded tired.

Sombra shrugged. "He figured that saving what he almost destroyed all by himself would earn him some points." She left the rest unsaid: Reaper had failed to factor in his past deeds. A good action had thus been tainted into the definitive disbanding of Overwatch and a creation of something else in its place.

"You can read me like a book, I can't argue with that," Reyes manifested quietly. "So I can just be hacked like any other tin can? You send a few commands and that's it?"

With a sly smile, the 'Asari woman' approached the limp body of the 'old Sombra.' "Oh, no, it's not that easy. Almost no one can." Then the body on the ground started breaking down into tiny multicolored particles that streamed towards 'Silthea.' "But then again, there's almost no one like me. Only you."

* * *

Besides the usual thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle** , whom now I credit as editor and contributor, I also want to thank **kyro2009** for again giving criticism and ideas.


	17. Citadel: Kintsugi

Council promenade - The Citadel

"Ambassador Goyle, this is unexpected," Councillor Melara acknowledged her. "Your request for an audience was intempestive and precipitous. What brings you before us?"

Anita Goyle took it as an invitation to step forward, and so she did. "Councillors, I am here to formally notify you that I am being called back to Arcturus for consultations."

The announcement was as shocking as it was —indeed— unexpected, as all three members of the supreme ruling body of the Citadel blinked at once.

"May we inquire as to the cause for this… recall?" Paratus, the Turian, ventured.

Goyle was angry, sad and disappointed in equal measure. "We got off to a rocky start, Councillors. Still, ever since the unfortunate events of the First Contact War we have strived to be good and civil neighbors. For that we were rewarded with attempts to isolate us and underhanded endeavors to sabotage or outright steal our technology."

"The Council does not—"

"I'm not finished." Goyle interrupted the Salarian councillor with a cold look. That certainly got their attention, Anita noticed: interrupting a member of the Council was an unheard-of breach of protocol.

 _To hell with them._

"Those are serious enough offenses, to which we have chosen to turn a blind eye. We have no more desire for war than you." She made a pause for added effect before adding: "Or so we thought."

"What?" Dalatrass Linron blurted out. "What is the meaning of this? What are you implying?"

The Ambassador stared piercingly at the Salarian. "Don't pretend ignorance. You do understand that you are proving the most bellicose of our citizens correct? I myself have pushed through initiatives to open up our borders to you, even after you did not return the gesture. We wanted you not to fear us. Evidently you have mistaken our openness for weakness."

"Ambassador, if you would please…" Melara did something she was not used to, considering her position. She raised a hand. "I speak for all three of us when I say that your posturing is disconcerting and offensive. Please state how have we offended you."

 _Fine. Have it your way._ Through her omni-tool she requested use of the main hologram projector. A few more commands, and lights dimmed to allow for further clarity as the projector started playing footage from the desperate battle that had been fought on Elysium.

On command, the footage froze to show a clear picture of a Turian trooper.

"We have in our possession thirty-seven Turian prisoners and two hundred and eighty-four corpses. They were part of an assault on the frontier colony of Elysium. Five hundred and fifty-nine humans and omnics died on the ensuing battle."

Deafening silence followed.

"You have our most sincere condolences, Ambassador. Piratical attacks on border colonies—"

Goyle did not give Paratus time to finish his reply. The footage changed to depict a shot of a colossal black and purple starship.

"We have to applaud the ingenuity of Turian engineers. This ship alone smashed through a complex of orbital defenses, sliced in half one of our destroyers, and completely demolished a planetside installation by landing atop it." The recording continued to play, depicting the actions of the starship as she spoke. "One has to wonder which other surprises the Turian military industrial complex has in store for us. To our knowledge, no vessel exceeding the displacement of a light destroyer can land planetside."

"Ambassador, we understand—"

"Members of our elite fast response corps positively identified the leader of the incursion as Saren Arterius." The recording froze, showing a capture from Anika Ziegler's helmet-mounted camera of the aforementioned Spectre as he neck-lifted Zarya one-handed. "I don't have to elaborate further on his affiliations."

"Ambassador Goyle," Paratus repeated, "while we understand you may be stressed by this appalling attack on your colony, an attack we condemn in the harshest of terms for nothing justifies an attack on civilians—"

"You try telling that to the Shambali who lived in Pokhara."

"—this is ludicrous. No member of the Turian Hierarchy armed forces, least of all one as accomplished and well known as Saren Arterius himself, would knowingly and purposefully endeavour to attack one of your colonies and so upset a relationship that is already unstable enough, as you have adequately put."

Anita Goyle was not moved by the statement. "We are in possession of the identity discs of all Turians who were killed, wounded or taken prisoner by our forces during the battle. Shall we submit pictures of them to you, so you can match them to your records?" A few taps on her omni-tool, then: "There, I have just forwarded them to you. Anything else you need to confirm our data? Information on their weapons and equipment? I'm confident you'll be able to trace down the company, platoon and squad each trooper belonged to."

"Ambassador, no Turian Hierarchy officer has issued orders to act against your ships or colonies, and no member of the Spectres would ever undertake so reckless an enterprise without directly reporting to us," the Turian councillor retorted irately, now visibly rattled.

"From this side of the aisle," Talron intervened, "it appears as if you were trying to fabricate a reason to initiate hostilities against the Citadel races."

Melara added, "While we have our differences, we do not believe those are meant to be settled by means of armed conflict. We strongly encourage you to think your next words carefully."

"'Fabricate a reason to initiate hostilities?'" Goyle repeated indignantly. "Shall I extend an invitation to Elysium to your ambassadors so they can survey by themselves the extent of the damage inflicted? Do you really believe we would effectively raze one of our own colonies in a false flag attack to 'fabricate a reason to initiate hostilities?'" She stared at the councillors dispassionately, as a teacher would when addressing a slow student.

"A national hero of one of our member states was killed in cold blood by Saren. The embassy mailbox is being flooded with messages from angry people as I speak, councillors. We are not anywhere near idiotic enough to start a war that we would have no chance to win. Need I remind you that the correlation of forces between our militaries is adverse to us? What could we possibly gain by picking a fight with you?" She paused to let that sink in, then: "We do not wish to go to war with you, but we cannot let this attack go unanswered. We demand restitution for our dead citizens and for the brave soldiers that fought to protect them. We demand a sworn commitment to respect our borders, worlds and interests in the future, and solid guarantees to back that commitment. We demand the surrender of Saren Arterius to have him stand trial for the killing of Aleksandra Zaryanova. We demand apologies and reparations from the Citadel.

"And we will have them, one way or another."

Anita Goyle did not wait for a dismissal. Instead, she turned on her heel and walked away.

Illyria City - Elysium

" _Ahhh!"_

"It's alright!" Anika was over Shepard instantly as she awoke. "It's alright. You're safe. It's alright." She looked over her shoulder and shouted at an orderly: "Get colonel Anderson here right now!"

Aaliyah blinked several times, then squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head slowly, and opened her eyes again to look at her restraints.

Weakly she complained, "This again?"

Anika was briefly puzzled, then she understood and lowered her gaze. "I know."

She rested her head again on the pillow, dreading to ask the question, but unable to contain herself: "How many?"

It pained Ziegler to answer. She struggled momentarily while she undid Shepard's restraints, but there was no way to go around it.

"Zarya is dead."

She paled, then her face contorted and a single sob wracked her. "All for nothing…" She covered her face with her hands. "What could we have done better? How could we have saved her? How?"

Anika did not reply.

Another sob, then a deep breath: "Who else?" _As if it wasn't bad enough…_

Again, Anika did not reply. She instead continued to check the instruments she had set up to monitor Shepard.

"Who else, Anika?" Shepard demanded. "I already know this was a disaster, who else?"

Anderson answered instead as he walked in. "Cumberland, Moronta, Olivera, Schreieder, Westmoreland. And I'll stop there."

 _Yes. Please._

The commanding officer of the _Thermopylae_ sat on the side of the bed. "At least we got you back, XO."

"With all due respect, skipper," she choked out, strangled by the effort not to cry out loud, "that's not much of a consolation."

Anderson handed her a handkerchief. "How about this, then: you managed to save almost all of the civilians. Kerkerian is wounded, but alive. Your squad took only a few scratches. Yes, the Watchpoint was destroyed, but it can be rebuilt. You can't do that with people.

"Honestly, we were rather worried about you. We thought that Prothean relic had left you with some brain damage."

Shepard's eyes flared. "That fucking thing got Zarya and the rest of my men killed. Good riddance." Then she closed her eyelids. "That said… something happened to me. I saw… I dreamt…" She struggled with words. "Scenes of slaughter… synthetics killing organics… I don't know what I saw." Then the huge ship that had crushed the Watchpoint flashed in her mind: "Except for the big-ass ship that attacked us." Painstakingly she sat on her bed and stared at Anderson: "I know one thing: it was not just a dream, skipper."

He eyed Ziegler: "The XO is physically okay, barring a few contusions," she said warily, "but she's had anomalous brain activity patterns and a lot of REM episodes while she was unconscious."

Anderson frowned. "I'd just chalk it up to PTSD," he manifested, "but you were in close contact with this Prothean thing. I read the field notes about it: someone speculated the monolith was a data trove of some kind. A specialist should take a look at you."

"For the good it's gonna do." Suddenly her heartbeat turned into a hammer mercilessly pounding at her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, panting, willing the pain away, hoping it would go away. "Goddamn… on second thought, I take that back… Even though I'd rather be putting holes into Turians."

"Ambassador Goyle was recalled for consultations. She said the Council claimed that 'no Spectre would lead an attack on our colonies without their express consent,'" he informed deadpan.

Despite herself, Shepard snorted. "I wonder if these uptight assholes ever heard what 'plausible deniability' means." She willed her eyes open, holding a hand to her forehead. The pain was not going away. "Just where the fuck did the Turians get that kind of hardware? We didn't know of anything even close to that."

The Mercy AI stepped on the conversation: "Colonel? I'm glad you're okay. Do you have a second?"

"For a given value of 'okay,'" Shepard groaned. "What is it, Angela?"

"This information just came in via the _Aconcagua._ "

Both Anderson and Shepard opened the report on their omni-tools.

"My God…" the black-skinned officer gasped. "Pokhara, too?"

"They sure are busy. And they're going to say they have nothing to do with it, right?"

The door slid open, then four people walked in: Amari, Martinsson, Oxton and Shimada.

"Lady Doomfist, ma'am," the shieldmaiden greeted her with audible relief.

"Astrid," she returned the greeting with a pained groan. "Good to see you all."

"Ma'am," Layali saluted quietly. She was more withdrawn than usual.

Lena and Genji merely nodded. The ninja was now unmasked, his grief clear for all the world to see. Tracer's pain was even more evident.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," the airborne trooper unexpectedly blurted out. "I… we… my men did their best. We wish we could have done better." Layali's eyes were bleary from the tears she had spent.

"Me too," Shimada seconded her. "I thought I had learned this already… how is it in English? It's crude, but real. Shit happens… is that right…?" His words were all that more painful for their awkwardness.

It was not easy to move Shepard. Feeling awful helped her conceal it. "Look, people," she begun, "some of you were already fighting wars long before I was born. At times I've felt kind of overwhelmed by the responsibility of being the commander you deserved and needed. I've made mistakes along the way. I'm not the legend Morrison is, and by no means I'm the legend Zarya was." Tears spilled, but otherwise her face was unchanged. "But having you here today, saying that you wish you could have done better, tells me I didn't do so bad. And in this clusterfuck of a disaster I'd not hear anything else.

"So hear me out. Zarya isn't here to tell you this, so I will: get back on your feet and carry on. She went down swinging. Regardless of how angry and sad we may be, it's how she wanted to go down, fighting to protect others. In this she succeeded. Most of the civvies survived. We paid an astronomically high price, but the mission is accomplished. The colony was saved."

"But Zarya was NOT!" Tracer exploded. "That… that _thing_ slammed her like a doll!"

Shepard's stare was relentless, only softened by the tears that flowed freely down her immutable face. "We seldom get to pick how we kick the bucket. Zarya got to choose. She could have ran away and have someone else die on her stead, but she chose to sacrifice herself. You want to honor her memory, fine. Do what she would have asked of you."

Lena's eyes flared and she clenched her teeth. _Don't you give me that talk,_ she warned Shepard, but otherwise said nothing. Aaliyah understood, but there was little else she could say — and nothing else she _would_ say. She knew Winston had asked the exact same thing of her. And both women knew as well that Zarya would not be the last to go.

Cronos Station

"Isn't it beautiful, having crossed the whole galaxy on assignment with this kind of news waiting for your return."

Despite her comment, Miranda was not angry. Instead, she felt kind of vindicated. That was the moment Cerberus had been preparing for.

Her superior, for once, was not smoking. He was sitting on his chair, arms crossed, his eyes going over the report he had received on the Elysium incident for the umpteenth time.

"Not exactly unexpected," he manifested slowly, "though the scale of the attack is."

His lieutenant shrugged. "They have wasted a perfect opportunity. If you have secretly built up an advantage in firepower over your enemy you don't reveal it in some raid on a remote colony."

"It depends on your long-term plans. If there had not been a Prothean relic on the Watchpoint, it could be said that they used the attack to send a message."

Miranda merely commented, "If."

A nod. "The relic changes everything, yes. I wonder if they knew something about it that we didn't."

"I have put some feelers out, but I don't believe we will learn anything of significance. I'm hearing some interesting reactions, however. Most of the Turian high ranking officers whose thoughts we know abhorred the attack on a civilian colony — _but_ agree that, as you said, a message had to be sent."

"Sore egos," he said simply. "Alliance brass is divided. Some are advocating a limited response, while others advise caution. The Prime Minister is still dwelling on the right course." He shook his head. "I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. There is no right answer here."

Miranda knew this as fact. Not responding in kind to the attack would be seen as a sign of weakness, and the Alliance had many enemies hungrily waiting for that sign, but even if they still had conserved a technological edge over the Citadel —an idea shattered by the footage of the huge starship that had razed the Watchpoint— acting against an enemy that overwhelmed them in numbers and matériel was hazardous in extreme.

"I've made it a priority to learn more about the vessel that attacked Elysium," she informed. "Where it was built, where is it based. I'm investigating the colonies hosting Turian forces from which the attackers were drawn." _Who knows. Maybe they're stupid enough._

He acknowledged her with a nod. "Turians are not known for making mistakes, but we might strike gold. Now, about our 'associates.' How did that go?"

"The mission was a success, as you know. We have acquired another former Talon asset, but that's—"

"Before we move on to that topic, tell me how Lacroix fared."

"She acquitted herself well, even for an environment not entirely suited to her skills. She's sharp, observant and accurate. Within expected parameters."

"Good. Now, about Sombra."

Uneasily she answered, "Actually, it is inaccurate to call her 'a former Talon asset.' She's a complete wildcard, and honors only her own interests. On the good side, she is as every bit as skilled a slicer as we were led to believe, if not more." Briefly she related the assault on the Scrapper's compound. "She has access to resources unknown to us. Quite likely her present body is a synthetic replacement, given her appearance."

"So she is a hazard to anyone outfitted with bionics. Hardly news. Unless…"

A troubled nod. Still ill at ease she added, "We are missing pieces of the puzzle. Nothing I said or promised to her enticed her to join us."

"But still she came with you."

"She came with her Talon colleagues, _not_ with us. I would limit her involvement to the minimum indispensable, treat her as an outside consultant, if you will. Even then, we will have to negotiate with her every time, and she will always get more out of the deal than us."

Thoughtfully he bowed his head. "So, in practice, the only net benefit of having her close at hand is depriving our enemies from access to her services."

"Possibly," she allowed. "We may find a chink in her armor through Lacroix and Reyes, bizarre as that may sound." Then her omni-tool rang. A few commands, then her brow knotted. "Actually… we probably may have to revise that estimate. We may get good information from her, but not necessarily the data we want."

Illyria City - Elysium

Again Shepard's eyelids felt monstrously heavy. Involuntarily her mind journeyed back to the distant past, when she had woken up to learn from doctor Cameron that Reaper had massacred her squad.

Merely recalling that tragedy caused her to let out a brief moan and squeeze her hurting eyes shut. For a few instants the light filtering through her eyelids waned, but she could not go back to sleep — she was irremediably awake now.

So she commanded her eyes to open. Everything was blurry gray-white for a few instants—

Except for a black and green form sitting next to her bed.

She turned her head, and blinked a few times. Her brow knotted in surprise:

"You?"

The form nodded. Eyes she could barely glimpse through the dark green crystal appraised her.

"I've been waiting for you to awake."

She strained to see, and the formlessness receded into a feminine silhouette clad in some kind of atmospheric suit painted in shades of green and black. Her three-fingered hands were clasped together on her lap.

"You're the Quarian girl."

"I still was last time I checked." The face contorted behind the crystal. She was smiling?

Aaliyah allowed herself a brief snicker—and she regretted it on the spot as it turned into bright pain lancing her head.

"Here," the girl offered, and put a cup on her hands. "I was told you could use this."

Whoever had told her that was right. Her dry mouth absorbed the cold water instantly.

"Thanks." Shepard studied her. Given how form-fitting the suit was, she could tell the girl was very slim—almost to an unhealthy point. "You have a name?"

A nod.

Aaliyah waited, but she was silent. "So what is it?"

"Shilu'Vael."

Painstakingly Shepard sat on the bed. "Is it a secret or something?"

She shook her head. "You didn't ask."

Again a smirk. "You're literal-minded."

"Merely trying to humor you." Now the Quarian girl was definitely smiling. The tone of her voice gave it away.

Despite feeling awful, Shepard's next question was: "How do you feel?"

"Better than you, apparently."

"From here it looks like you need to put on some weight."

Her tone became serious. "I haven't had solid foods for a while."

"You should get plenty of that here. Hasn't doctor… doctor Linping seen to it?"

"She tried, yes. But there's this problem…" She said something Shepard's translator did not catch.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that? Using simpler words."

"Oh… well… I can't digest your food. At best I won't find it… nourishing? At worst, I could get a very bad allergic reaction."

"Oh, I understand. Turians have that issue too."

"Yes," she nodded emphatically. "I would buy their food, actually."

A wave of nausea washed over Shepard. She clamped her mouth shut, her stomach churning, then after a sickening moment it passed. Then the door slid open:

"Ah, so we're awake." It was the Chinese doctor that had looked after Shilu'Vael.

Aaliyah and the Quarian exchanged a glance, then the alien girl shrugged. They both were awake, in fact.

Xian first ran a brief check on her original patient, then she turned her attention to Shepard: "How did you sleep?"

"Honestly…" Aaliyah had to stop herself from shaking her head again, lest the pain returned to torment her. "I had more of those dreams… Again people getting slaughtered by machines and that huge ship… how much did I sleep?"

"Two days."

A surprised blink. "What?"

The Chinese woman nodded. "We were starting to worry. Doctor Ziegler was recording your brainwave patterns. As a matter of fact she is reaching out to some people about your case."

A groan. "Oh well. I suppose I can't get a replacement brain, right?"

Linping replied deadpan, "That might be a little difficult."

"Screw it. Is there any particular reason for which I should still be in bed?"

"None. It would probably help you if you got some fresh air." The doctor opened a cabinet next to her bed. A freshly pressed uniform was waiting for her.

"Okay." Without a care in the world, Shepard got off the bed and put her feet on the ground — or tried to. She almost fell as she swayed on her feet:

"Watch out!" Shilu'Vael moved to catch her.

"Thanks." She rubbed her eyes and tried to stand on her own, and was annoyed to find out how difficult it was for her to keep her balance. Acidly she joked, "Shit… you're certain no one slipped some booze into my IV line?" This time she managed to reach for her clothes. She stripped off her hospital gown and dressed slowly, under Xian's wary gaze. The Quarian turned her face away from her nude body, something Shepard found odd. "I would have thought you Quarians had no nudity complex. You know, so much people living in tiny quarters…"

"I'm… I was not raised on the Migrant Fleet."

Aaliyah blinked, but Shilu'Vael was not forthcoming, so she shrugged.

"That bruise on your shoulder does not look well," Xian noted with a hint of worry.

"Hmph. I just decided having only one fake arm killed my looks, doc."

Painstakingly she made her way out, the Quarian girl in tow. She remembered something: "Why were you waiting for me?"

Shilu'Vael crossed her arms across her chest. She appeared embarrassed. "I wanted to thank you for saving my life."

"It wasn't just me."

"No, but I already spoke with the other troopers. They were all very worried about you but they're on duty so I volunteered to look after you."

Shepard smiled. "That was very kind of you."

The compliment only caused the Quarian girl to act even more awkwardly. "It's all I can do right now. Might as well do it well."

Aaliyah winced in pain for a moment, then recovered. "Shit… what did you do for a living? Before they captured you?"

A shrug. "Privateering, smuggling, bargain hunting. Whatever it took to make ends meet."

"If I don't intrude, I found it odd that you're not involved with the Migrant Fleet."

"My grandmother was exiled. She… she was charged with treason for disclosing highly sensitive information to some raiders and got banished for it. She got herself killed trying to make up for her 'mistake.' The Admiralty declared her innocent on a posthumous retrial. My mother… she was very angry. She swore off the Fleet and moved to Illium. She still lives there."

"Oh." A few silent steps, then: "I don't know much about your people, but I gather that's pretty serious stuff."

"Very. She's a very outspoken and headstrong woman. She said she would live on her own rather than depend on people quick to look for scapegoats and slow to admit errors."

"For what it may be worth… I don't know your mom but I could get to like her."

Shilu'Vael shook her head wistfully. "You wouldn't. Her resentment has consumed her."

Aaliyah nodded. "That happens." After a breath she switched topics: "We had speculated the Batarians had kept you alive because you would know something that they could use for their research on AI."

"Of course I do," she nodded emphatically. "My suit is almost independently sentient. But developing artificial intelligence is the single most heinous crime on Citadel space."

"Because of the Geth, no doubt."

The Quarian girl sighed. "That was a tragedy of our own making. We got ourselves expelled from our homeworld because of our folly." After a few steps, she noted: "I can't help but be amazed at how peacefully you coexist with your AI creations."

"It didn't come cheap. Someday I'll introduce you to Zenyatta. It would be best if you learned all the facts from him."

Behind the crystal of her mask, Shilu'Vael frowned. "You make him sound like he was some kind of eminence."

"Because he is. But that can't be explained. You have to experience it yourself."

She was in for another surprise when she finally walked out into the street, next to the wreckage of the tram station — and found two very distinct squads waiting for her.

"Ma'am," Yuri Aliyev saluted, the four troopers waiting with him following suit as one. "We're glad to know you're okay."

"I wouldn't say that much," she saluted back, then eyed the huge Krogan and his fellow mercenaries also waiting a few steps from them. "Wrex, was it?"

Surprisingly, the weathered veteran grinned. It was a disquieting visage, like watching an alligator's maw. "You're good with names."

"Colonel Anderson enlisted their services, ma'am. If I may add, I understand it was quite a bargain."

The alien shrugged — or Aaliyah understood it as such. "Think of it as a promotional arrangement."

"Scouting out potential employers?"

"We have little love for Turians ourselves. Bad blood goes back a long while."

"All the way back to the Krogan uprisings, I gather."

A scowl. "We had it coming. No argument there, even if some of my men disagree." Indeed, one of the alien mercenaries did the equivalent of clearing his throat. "They took it too damned far, that's it. But I gather you're not interested in hearing that."

"I am, but not right now." Shepard was actually asking herself why had she sought an excuse when her omni-tool rang:

"Colonel, good evening," Mercy greeted her warmly. "Amari, Oxton and Shimada are on duty but asked me to tell you that they hope for your quick recovery. Kerkerian and Martinsson are on the officers' club and would like to see you."

"Kind of them. I will after I handle whatever it is that you're contacting me for."

"Colonel Anderson asks that you meet him at the barracks outside town."

"Tell him I'll be there ASAP."

"Yes, colonel. Look after your health, please."

"Thanks." Shepard turned to Shilu'Vael behind her. "I forgot to ask. Have you been debriefed already?"

She shook her head. "No. I was out of intensive care only yesterday."

Aaliyah blinked. "And you're already walking around."

"Oh, it's the usual thing for us. Quarian suits are walking hospitals. I'm swimming in antivirals and phages right now."

Shepard headed towards a parked hovercar. "This is neither the time nor the place, but we should later ask if there is something more definitive that can be done about it. Now come with me."

* * *

Aaliyah arrived at the barracks just in time to see a shuttle landing. For a moment, she stood there watching the vessel make its final approach — it was an unfamiliar model, neither a Kodiak nor a Montauk.

"Shepard, you're just in time." Anderson gave her a quick examining look as he walked in long strides towards her.

"Doctor Linping said Anika was trying to get in touch with someone…"

"That's why I asked you to come here."

She nodded and turned to the Quarian: "Please wait for me—"

"She can come too." Anderson had already turned on his heel and was walking back inside the compound, much to Shepard's perplexity.

Something was afoot. The barracks were heavily guarded by Alliance Navy marines — the colonial troopers that usually ran the facility were nowhere to be seen. The soldiers saluted her as she went by, but did not react to Shilu'Vael's presence. That only increased her puzzlement as they traversed the facility.

Anderson led her to the landing pad set behind the barracks. Scores of heavily armed marines lined the sides. The side door of the shuttle opened—and all the puzzle pieces fell into place.

"Shepard," he said formally as the newcomers approached, "meet Nihlus Kryik, Tela Vasir and Jondum Bau, members of the Citadel Special Tactics and Recon agency."

Behind her, Shilu'Vael held her breath in surprise.

"The Spectres are here to investigate the attack on our colony," Anderson informed. To Shepard's arched eyebrow, he replied by gesturing at Vasir:

"The Turian Hierarchy is investigating this incident at our behest," the Asari stated. "The orders for the attack were issued by a high ranking officer of their navy, without any involvement from policy makers."

"So far, we have confirmed that all of the identity discs in your possession are genuine. Evidence seems to place the blame on a rogue admiral," Bau continued. "One with a known history of advocacy for concrete action against the Systems Alliance."

"Which is all suspiciously convenient," Nihlus concluded. "And it does not explain Saren Arterius. Hence our presence here."

Shepard bit her tongue as the names of her fallen soldiers jumped to mind, but no one failed to miss the incendiary glare. "This 'suspiciously convenient' thing you mention got _my men killed,_ " she spat in hatred. Anderson warned her with a look, but she was past caring. The dam had broken and black acid flowed out, burning her mouth. "So you now come here and explain these beautifully logical things to me. 'Oh, it was a rogue officer, we're sorry, it won't happen again.' Well, _fuck you._ "

The Turian spectre took no offense. "We understand. I would react exactly as you did. I would also be working hard to hold myself in check."

"You can take that empathy and shove it. Are we done here, sir?"

"We are here on an unofficial basis. The Council does not know we are here," Nihlus replied. "And even if they knew there's little they could do. Spectres are appointed by them and report to them, but only other Spectres police us.

"We have reasons to suspect a hidden agenda, and we are going to look into this, however deep it goes. We're not politicians. There has been enough enmity and killing between our species to add more to it. We came here to communicate it in person — and to ask for your cooperation. Your ambassador said that you had no more wish for war than we do."

"And she's right," the Salarian added.

"Garrus Vakarian here suggested we tried to recruit you first," Vasir pointed out. Garrus stepped aside from the group of aides behind the Spectres and gave her a nod in greeting. "He's worked shoulder to shoulder with you and vouches for your capabilities and those of your men."

Shepard blinked twice and stood completely motionless for a second.

"Let me get this straight." She shifted her gaze between the Spectres, Vakarian and Anderson. The black-skinned officer winced, knowing her and knowing what was coming — but he did not stop her. "A Turian assault force wrecks this colony, blows my ship in pieces, massacres civilians and tears through _my_ men, outright _murdering_ one of the most legendary and beloved symbols of Starwatch." After a brief, irate pause, the punchline came: "And now I got another Turian asking me to work with him."

Nihlus was impassible. "Yes."

Aaliyah snorted in disbelief. "I don't know whether you're too naive or too stupid."

"You've worked with those you called your enemies in the past," Bau pointed out. "Even with one you had long-standing issues with. And yet you set aside your emotions, worked together, and prevailed."

She shot a blazing glare at Anderson. _Thanks for spilling the beans, skipper._ She clenched her jaw and pursed her lips, searching for a reply.

"And you're trying to equate that situation with this one."

Shilu'Vael had remained silent thus far, both out of amazement at being allowed to witness such a meeting — and out of stunned surprise. Anderson had let her in on purpose, she realized now. _How could they know?_

"If I may…"

"What?" Aaliyah said curtly.

"Do you know the stories of these people?"

"Yeah, Spectres are basically the Citadel version of Blackwatch," she sneered. "So what?"

"I—I don't know this 'Blackwatch' you mention, but they are the… you could call them the ultimate police force. In recent years these very Spectres brought down two different Councillors. I would know… I helped Nihlus' aide expose one of them." Garrus gave the Quarian a knowing nod.

Shepard felt like a sandbag had hit her on her head. News of the political upheaval that had rocked the Citadel had, of course, reached Alliance space. _So it was these guys?_ "Let me guess. And this ex-Councillor sicced the Batarians on you."

"Probably," Vakarian allowed. "That's one loose end we couldn't get confirmed, but since Shilu is here with you we assume it was as you say."

Again Aaliyah alternatively glared at the Spectres, Vakarian and Anderson. She dominated the surge of anger that had swamped her, took a few deep breaths, and then:

"So you say someone's played you."

The Asari gave her a nod. "It's possible. Who would stand to gain with a conflict between the Council and the Alliance is lost on us, but that's for later. We have to head this off before it spirals out of hand."

Shepard bowed her head and was silent for a few seconds.

"I agree," she said with reluctance. "Even if I would prefer to shoot the lot of you." She clenched her fists briefly, then stared hard at Nihlus. "If you really want me and my men in, I'm not going to hold anything back. Turians blew this colony to bits and slaughtered people I knew for years. You say you're innocent, prove it."

To her surprise, the Spectres nodded as one. "Fair enough," Bau accepted.

* * *

 _Author's note:_ once again, many thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for input and proofreading.


	18. Citadel: Bridges

Erinyes station - Attican Traverse

The door of the shuttle opened. Shepard walked out feeling like she was in a dream.

"So this is why we did not know of this place."

Next to her, Anderson nodded. "We hope the Batarians don't know just how close they got."

The hangar was just large enough for a standard freight liner to fit. Next to their shuttle, another was preparing for departure. Their crew — a mixed team of Salarians and Turians — did not give them so much as a side glance as they boarded their craft. An Asari and a Volus coordinated the work of some droids that had been tasked with moving cargo from the docking bays to the walkways and thence to the station proper. An atmospheric hatch set on the rock wall opposite the hangar exit opened, and three humans walked in.

Oxton and Shimada followed Shepard and Anderson as they left the shuttle. Genji was slowly shaking his head in disbelief. "I can understand why Mikhailovich was so concerned."

Tracer, on the other hand, was silent. Her bloodshot eyes surveyed the unique spectacle of both Alliance and Citadel people working together, but there was no spark of surprise on them.

The humans approached Anderson and the dozen people he had brought with him.

"Colonel," a woman with short graying hair addressed Anderson. "Welcome to Erinyes station. If the circumstances were different, I'd say it's a pleasure to have you here."

"I couldn't agree more to that, doctor," he replied. "People, meet doctor Karin Chakwas. She's our lead medical officer here."

Chakwas surveyed the newcomers. "What a set of faces you've brought us, David. The very Lena Oxton herself, and Angela Ziegler's own daughter."

"I knew I would end up here eventually," Anika commented, to Shepard's surprise.

"I had also expected to see doctor Palukhina coming along. I hope she's okay?"

"She was unharmed, but… she's still trying to recover from the shock of the attack."

"By looking after everyone who was injured, I surmise."

"You know Mila. An ER ward is where she's at her best. If that helps her to cope with the stress, I'm not stopping her."

The gray-haired woman bowed her head. "I understand her completely." She then turned to the rest: "And here we have Fareeha Amari's own child, and the intrepid Alliance Navy officer who fought Gabriel Reyes himself. I'm honored to make your acquaintance."

Layali gave her a cordial nod as much as her — currently even more glacial than usual — character allowed. Shepard seized the opportunity to ask instead:

"I was just doing my job, doctor. I surmise this place hasn't been operating for long?"

"Your assumption is correct. It's been here for scarcely less than a year."

"I have my own ideas about it, but why here?"

"The way I understand it, it was a matter of convenience of access for all parties involved. It's more or less equidistant from two mass relays. Maybe a tad closer to their side, actually. Also, it's out of the way. There aren't any colonies nor mining developments nearby."

Chakwas and her aides escorted them through the station to a conference room. A huge no man's land separated two groups — some Citadel operatives, and a gaggle of uniformed Alliance officers.

One of them stepped forward. He had admiral stripes on his shoulders. Both Anderson and Shepard saluted, and the man returned the gesture.

"Colonel Shepard, welcome to Erinyes. I'm Steven Hackett. Anderson has told me a lot about you," he said.

"It's all lies, sir."

Hackett smirked grimly. "The good things too?"

"No, sir, those are all true," she smirked back.

"Good thing that they are. Have you deduced what's going on here?"

"A clandestine installation right between Alliance and Citadel space where both factions work together, probably without sanction from their parent governments? No, sir, I have no idea about what's going on here."

Anderson spoke then. "This is your newest assignment, Shepard."

Aaliyah snorted. "I figured you wouldn't have us come all the way here just for the sights." Then she turned serious. "Who'll be in charge, skipper? Us or them?"

The black-skinned officer nodded in agreement. "That's a concern. We hope to work it out now."

Shepard studied the Citadel agents and recognized a few faces; Garrus Vakarian and Valena Danaan gave her polite nods.

She decided someone had to be the first to break the ice, however much she loathed the whole episode and however bright the memories of the attack on Elysium still burned in her mind—

—but Anika acted first. Upon spotting Danaan, she smiled warmly and approached the Citadel group.

"Valena," she greeted her. "I'm happy to see you're doing well."

The Asari smiled back. Again Anika was overwhelmed by the vast calm that she seemed to radiate. She remembered witnessing that same calm on the sick bay of the Nile — and how utterly the horrors lurking in the mines of Pokhara had shattered her.

"May the blessings of the Goddess be with you, miss Ziegler. Time has been kind to you."

Anika blushed at the subtle compliment. "I only wish that for once we met on peaceful circumstances."

Cronos station

" _Pasen_."

Amélie Lacroix and Gabriel Reyes stepped into the room, only to find chaos. Ceiling, floor and wall panels had been removed, exposing the myriad pipes and cables behind. Random pieces of wiring and computer parts were scattered everywhere.

"You wasted no time," Reaper quipped.

Sombra was squatting on the floor surrounded by cables, omni-tool modules and cylindrical containers marked with all manner of radiation and biohazard warnings. Some of the wires were straight-out plugged into her body.

She snorted. " _Por favor._ This place has enough surveillance and listening devices to outfit a small country. And, as I said before, I want some privacy."

"And a safe place from which to cast your nets, I gather," Amélie added.

"There's no truly safe place, but this one is close enough. They know I'm onto something, they just don't know what it is."

Reaper stood still, arms crossed over his chest, mask on. "You got us all hooked. Now cut to the chase."

The dark-skinned girl looked at him over her shoulder with a malicious glint in her eyes. " _Compórtese, señor Reyes._ All these years and you haven't yet learned patience."

Amélie stayed put. She did not want to provoke Sombra. The girl/woman/nanite consciousness/whatever had a short fuse and could overpower them both with merely a thought.

For the benefit of Lacroix and Reyes, a screen set on the wall turned on. " _Aquí, chicos._ This here is Pokhara on its present shape. Notice something?"

Reaper uttered a groan. "Riiiight… this is where I saved those ingrates' unworthy asses." Then he focused and examined the image closely: "Hold on… The mines… There's a canyon there now."

The bottom of the canyon was littered with glowing blue dots. Reyes remembered what those dots were: the bluebloods that had went down into the mines with him had said that was pure eezo — something exceedingly strange since it never presented itself in that form. Someone had refined it.

"What happened here?"

Sombra switched the view to focus on one of the many fortresses orbiting the world. Those installations had been built as a line of defense against Citadel interlopers first — and later reinforced as repeated attempts to crack the secret of that world had ended horribly. As such, they were very heavily armed and armored…

…but now they were stone-cold dead. Something had punched perfect holes on them.

"What happened here?" unknowingly Lacroix echoed Reyes' question.

Another screen showed up depicting another, slightly different orbital fortress — with identical holes. A cluster of warships was around it, including the huge shape of a carrier. "Compare and contrast _."_

"I've seen this place… this is Elysium."

"And you also saw what attacked the place."

The side-screen changed to depict a shot from Shepard's helmet-mounted camera: a huge black-and-purple starship was firing a red beam on the main tower of the Watchpoint.

Reaper frowned behind his mask. "So the same ship is behind both attacks." He stared piercingly at the huge canyon that had sprung into existence right next to the abandoned remains of the Shambali colony, and noted: "And whatever was buried on that rock isn't there anymore."

" _Así_ _dicen_. Now, onto _parte dos_?"

"Shoot."

"You're about to get new orders."

Lacroix arched her eyebrows. "Is that so."

" _El señor Reyes_ and his _femme fatale_ should really learn more about who they're working for." Reaper clenched his fists at the comment, but before he could frame a retort she continued:

"I'll give them one thing. These Cerberus _hombres_ have laundered their income sources more carefully than drug cartels. But not carefully enough… in the end, their trails always lead to the same corporations and sponsors. Some of the latter are hard-line xenophobes who want nothing to do with the Citadel, and they are giving this _hombre Ilusorio_ —" Sombra heavily laced these words with irony "—quite an earful. They say the Alliance is being too… demure."

"So they're going to send us after some aliens."

" _Exacto_."

"Us?" Reyes muttered. "Out of all people, they're sending us? Might as well announce it to the whole galaxy, right?"

"That's the idea: that they get the message. Not an outright declaration of war, but a limited response."

Lacroix stared stonily at the screen. "Not doing anything would be seen as a sign of weakness." Her voice spoke volumes about how much of an _idiocy_ the whole idea was in her mind. _Make a bad situation worse by stoking the fire. Bravo._

"They're not going to cheer at it either. Just look at this."

The view of Pokhara was replaced on the screen with a star chart. A lone asteroid on the border of Alliance and Citadel space was highlighted.

" _Quel est_ —?"

"Meet Erinyes station," Sombra interrupted Amélie, then she glanced at Reyes: "Your friend Aaliyah Shepard and most of your old acquaintances from Overwatch were dispatched there for a very, very, very black meeting with some Citadel Spectres."

Reaper snorted. "That makes things easier." Then his voice changed: "Oxton and Ziegler are soft, but they're not traitors."

" _Yo no dije eso._ They're going to try and figure out just who was behind Elysium and Pokhara."

Now it was Amélie's turn to snort. "That's some gall. To claim innocence after seeing Turians on the ground."

"It gets better, _señorita_ Lacroix. They have dug up some facts and are outright going to say that…"

Erinyes station

"…That was no ship of ours."

Suddenly the silence in the room was so deep the soft whirring of the atmospheric machines could be heard through the walls.

Hackett stood very still. He stared at Nihlus in the eye long and hard before replying:

"This is hardly the best way to build up trust between us."

The Turian gestured at Tela Vasir. "I want to bring something to your attention," the Asari Spectre announced, then turned on the hologram projector. At once a view of a huge orbital shipyard appeared: like so many bees, assembly workers and droids fussed over an unfinished dreadnought. "These are the Aephus shipyards. The ship you see here is to be christened the _Tireless_. If you pay close attention to it, you will notice it's almost fifteen percent longer than previous Turian dreadnought designs."

"This is the most modern ship the Hierarchy is constructing as we speak," Nihlus added. "It is supposed to incorporate advances in ferrofluid weaponry reverse engineered from whatever we could glean from you."

The hologram projector shifted to show another shipyard orbiting a different world. This time, the vessel was almost complete, its shape the cruciform silhouette typical of Asari voidcraft.

"Meet _Maloraphea_ ," Vasir said. "I understand you already know of this ship." Hackett nodded in silence. "The only thing keeping her from deployment is a refit to accommodate a new barrier engine design."

"And, at last, here is the _Mannovai_ ," Bau noted as the hologram projector shifted for a third and final time. "It will be years before she is ready for deployment, as you can see. She's not the biggest ship we have built by any means, but she incorporates revolutionary technology to minimize heat emissions."

Nihlus gave the Alliance officers some time to let that sink in before continuing. "We decided to share these details with you… and in doing so potentially commit treason… to get a single point across. The ship that attacked you performed feats none of our vessels is capable of. None of those ships could land planetside, let alone slice one of your destroyers in half. No ship in the Council navies can present battle to an Alliance ship of equal displacement and win."

Hackett remained impassible. The officers next to him traded whispers, then finally communicated their conclusion to their leader.

"The way we see it, you present us with a choice. Either we interpret this as an elaborate gambit to lull us into a false position, one further embellished with new information and insights into your military… or we believe what you say."

Shepard's group traded looks between them. With a glance, Aaliyah interrogated Amari; Pharah's daughter replied with a silent nod.

"We suggest you choose the later," Bau encouraged. "I believe I'm talking to some of the brightest the Alliance has to offer. Operatives who achieve similar seniority on the Special Tasks Group have both brains and brawn. I have to imagine Overwatch and Starwatch are no different."

Silence was his only answer.

"If we are to move forward, we do so assuming we're all on the same side." Vasir glared at the Alliance members, one by one, to finally rest her gaze on the two omnic engineers, Brulirea and Lumiscant. "If someone is trying to play us against one another and boasts that kind of firepower, whatever reservations we may have against you and your kind must be put aside."

Neither omnic was impressed, as illustrated by Lumiscant's dry comment. "And by saying that you imply we should do likewise."

"You should," Bau backed his Asari colleague. "You claim to deserve acceptance by the rest of the galaxy and that mistrust against synthetics is entirely misplaced. Take this as your chance to prove your points."

"We cannot afford to bicker here. If we are threatened by an unknown enemy that so surpasses all of us and that counts Saren Arterius as his agent, then we are in great danger. The Spectres are the last line of defense of the Citadel. I need not elaborating further on this." Nihlus looked expectantly at Hackett.

The admiral remained stolid, but he had already made up his mind.

"We will proceed on the assumption that you speak truly." He did not add that, were they to discover otherwise, Hackett and his faction would withdraw their support and use whatever they learned to act against the Council without reservation.

No Spectre needed that kind of clarification anyway.

"We thank you for your trust." Vasir then directed her gaze at Shepard. "That allows us to move forward."

Aaliyah blinked twice, then she suppressed a sigh. _Here goes…_ "Yes?"

"Your commanding officer informed that you were in close contact with a Prothean relic."

"That is correct."

"And that, following that contact, you noted that you were experiencing strange visions and dreams."

"…Yes."

Nihlus frowned, then turned to Hackett: "For how long had this relic been in your possession?"

A female Alliance officer stiffened. "We fail to see how a Prothean relic is relevant to this incident."

"You're correct," Bau allowed. "There is no immediately obvious connection here. But my colleague here is having a… how is it that you call it… a hunch."

Hackett bristled. "The Alliance is not bound by Citadel regulations regarding archaeological artifacts from forerunner civilizations." He left the rest unsaid: _and you want us to tell you what we know just because one of you has a hunch?_

Nihlus bowed his head. "No, you're not. But it is just too big a coincidence that this unknown enemy would target precisely the place where research on one such artifact was being conducted."

"And it is also too big a coincidence that you would want to learn about this where this enemy failed, if that was the purpose of the attack — when we haven't even yet discussed Saren Arterius in earnest."

 _Right in the waterline,_ Shepard thought.

Vasir glared stonily at Hackett. Nihlus, on the other hand, was conciliatory:

"You're right," he accepted. "I can understand why you would see it that way. I don't have any more arguments to use against your suspicions but an offer for help instead.

"A young graduate of the University of Serrice posits an interesting theory: certain Prothean artifacts acted as information relays and repositories, equipped with software that autonomously regulated who had access to the data. Information was either communicated by touch or by wireless transmission to the brain via some unknown process — but these devices were carefully tuned to interface with Protheans only. Thus, most of the data contained on other active relics that have survived up to this day remains unavailable to us.

"At most, what we get is something similar to what your colonel has reported to experience: snippets, fragments, dreamlike visions. Multiple people interfacing with the same device tended to get similar but slightly different results, and only in this way we have been able to glean something from them. And, given what she claims to have seen, I believe it's important that we work together to try and make some sense out of the information she received."

The Alliance officers mulled Nihlus' words and exchanged a few whispers. Hackett then replied: "If there is something we could read about this theory, we would like to have a look at it."

"You can have it," Bau said as he tapped his omni-tool, "but I must add that we should not dawdle. When we agreed on this compact it was decided to keep it small because that would allow us to act swiftly."

"I believe we have already risked a lot ourselves to prove our position to you," the Asari Spectre added. "Even if the rest of the whole Citadel people would not, we merit your trust." There was something else floating in the air: _we are giving, and not receiving something in return._

That implicit rebuke was what moved Hackett to accept. "I see your point. What do you suggest?"

Vasir exchanged glances with her colleagues, and then gestured at Danaan. The Asari veteran approached Shepard: "Colonel? If you would please come with me?"

Shepard turned to Hackett and Anderson. Both nodded at her. Aaliyah nodded in turn and allowed herself to be led out of the room by Valena. Her puzzlement increased as they went down the passageway and entered a small guard room. The squad of Turians there stood up and left on a single gesture of Danaan's.

"What—why did you bring me here?"

"Privacy," Danaan secured the door.

 _Privacy?_ The gossip she had picked up from the Asari emigre program took too long to jump to her mind. She snorted: "You gotta be fuckin' kidding with me."

The Asari turned to face her. Strangely, pity and regret were written on her face. "I'm sorry, colonel. This is a travesty for me. It takes a lot of trust to do this."

"Stay away from me." Shepard took a single step back.

Valena sat on one of the four chairs around the single table there. "I see you've already heard about this second-hand." She sounded disappointed.

Aaliyah found it disarming. She wanted to be irritated about having been talked into that situation but she could not. "Some."

The Asari sighed and lifted her head again to look at her in the eyes. "This can only be done willingly, colonel. I would much prefer there was another way."

"I never imagined getting me laid would become a matter of galactic importance."

Valena laughed out loud, dispelling some of the tension. "Ha! Not quite. What do you think that happens exactly on a melding?"

"It's how you girls f—… have sex."

"Not only that. For a brief instant, we become a single unified nervous system. That allows us to look into each other's minds and memories."

Shepard paled. "Do… do they know?" She pointed in the direction of the conference hall.

The Asari nodded.

"Shit." _I can already hear the comments… but she would get to know everything!_

Valena read her thoughts and smiled. "Twenty years ago by your counting I melded with Anika Ziegler. That allowed us to learn enough of one another to successfully argue for a cease fire."

 _HOLY SHIT!_ "She's… she's… _fuck!_ She knows everything!"

For an instant Aaliyah was overwhelmed. _So THAT'S why she can talk in English… SHIT!_ "What's keeping you from acting on everything you've learned?"

"A vow to her."

She bristled. "Bullshit."

"It's true, colonel. I truly want peace with you. I wish more of my kind would get to meld with yours so they would learn you're not to be afraid of."

For the first time in many years, Shepard did not know which way to jump. "I… I can't believe this."

"That's why Nihlus wanted me to do it. You know what it's like?" Danaan shook her head slowly. "I have to live with the burden of keeping an incredible volume of secrets from my own kin. And I couldn't live with myself if I betrayed Anika's trust."

"Sure, you fucking couldn't," Aaliyah bristled in disbelief again. "And I'd wager you couldn't live with yourself either if you betrayed mine, too. Right." She ran her hands through her hair. Her trained instincts and experience screamed at her that every breath Danaan drew further jeopardized the Alliance. "Haven't you, er, _melded_ with your kin since then? How can I know you haven't spread around what you've learned?"

"I'm a guarantor of peace between two civilisations, Shepard. It's a responsibility I'm honored to live with."

"Don't give me that crap!" Aaliyah snapped.

"Eventually I'll introduce you to my mentor and you'll understand." Valena's voice hardened a tiny but perceptible bit: "There is only one thing to do if you want to be absolutely certain."

 _Yeah, allow you to brain-fuck me._ The phrase was on the tip of her tongue, but she held herself back and forced herself to think through her irritation and wariness. _Did Anika ever mention anything of this… No, she didn't. If she would…_ _Omigod_.

Shepard closed her eyes, took a deep breath and sighed. "Nothing guarantees you'll be able to make any sense of what I saw either."

"No, I agree," Valena allowed, "but I can give you one thing: certainty that you weren't hallucinating."

 _I can't be fucking doing this._

She briefly went over everything she knew about Protheans: forerunners, rendered completely extinct roughly five aeons ago. The relic they had left behind had implanted some sort of knowledge on her head, and the only clear scene she could make out of all that was the visage of that gigantic starship — exactly like the one that had razed Elysium.

Her blood chilled as she finally made the connection: _is it… is that ship… somehow linked to the destruction of the Protheans?_

 _I can't believe I didn't see it earlier._

Valena noticed she had went pale again, and was about to say something before Shepard cut her short: "Okay… okay. I… I'm fucking scared, alright?"

She tried to soothe her. "This is not something to be afraid of—"

"I know! I'm not talking about your mind-sex thing!" Again she ran her hands through her hair, then sighed, and looked at Danaan hard: "Okay, let's get this over with."

The Asari read her emotions. She had been obviously agitated by something, and that had been the kicker for her change of mind. She bowed her head.

"Sit here." She pointed at the chair next to hers.

* * *

Danaan and Shepard walked back into the conference room — oddly enough, with the same dreamy and confused look on their faces.

"So?" Vasir demanded.

Valena shook her head. "I'm positively sure it wasn't some delirium of hers."

"But that's it," Bau noted worriedly.

Danaan merely nodded. "I… there's something else there, but neither of us can make any sense out of it."

Hackett, Anderson and the rest of the officers glared at the Spectres. "I hope this whole episode has no lasting effects on our colonel," the admiral said gruffly.

Aaliyah caught a mischievous glint in Martinsson's eyes and shot a searing glance her way, but that was not enough to dispel the sensation of complete bewilderment. She surveyed the room, focusing briefly on the group of Citadel operatives mirroring her selection of Starwatch agents: they were all looking at her with what amounted to complicit amusement.

"No, sir, I… I am fine. A little fuzzy-headed, but fine." _In no way this is the kind of afterglow I'm used to._

Vasir allowed herself a smirk. "A first melding can be an overwhelming experience."

"So we have learned nothing new." Nihlus' voice was tinged with disappointment.

Both Danaan and Shepard shook their heads.

"No," Aaliyah said. "She… she doesn't know of anything that could… decrypt this. There's something else on my head but it's still locked away."

"So much for that lead," the Salarian Spectre muttered.

The Starwatch platoon watched with some concern as their commander sat again next to them. For a moment Lena came out of her melancholy to glance at Aaliyah with worry; Shepard noticed it and gestured at her not to trouble herself, but her dreamy look was not going away. She looked at the unfolding discussion with disinterest, her mind still trying to come to grips with the _enormity_ of what she had seen in Danaan's head.

 _My God, we were so wrong… we deride the Asari for their… mating habits, but to them… to them we're children venturing outside the playpen…_

 _Children toying with the keys to a nuclear arsenal._

Danaan was _old._ The Asari was four hundred years her senior, and had been a member of the small but elite military of their race for most of her adult life.

Things she had read about, things she had dwelt in concern for some time but eventually set aside as more pressing matters demanded it, now presented themselves before her in all their terrifying majesty.

The Krogan Rebellions.

The Morning War.

The Alliance was standing up to a _giant_ that had never brought their full strength to bear against them.

And humanity relied on allies that could just as easily—

 _NO!_ She squeezed her eyes shut. _These are NOT my thoughts! If omnics wanted to wipe us out it would be child's play for them… they've insinuated themselves into our society so deeply that if they ever were to pull the plug everything would collapse. They don't need to fight us. If they wanted to win, they would win._

 _And how is that right exactly?_

 _God fucking dammit, why the hell did I agree to this brain-fuck thing again?!_

Hackett's voice returned her to reality: "We need to move on firmer ground than just the… er… 'visions' of our colonel here."

"I agree," Nihlus seconded him. "And so far, it appears that the only person with answers is the one we haven't yet discussed — Saren Arterius. Much as I'd like it otherwise, there is no contesting that he was part of the attackers… so our next logical step is to track him down and arrest him."

"Easier said than done," Bau noted with some concern. "These would be charges enough to declare him rogue and outlaw if the attack had happened in Citadel space."

"But it didn't, and the Turians will never surrender their most accomplished Spectre," Vasir finished his argument, "so it falls upon us."

"Upon us all," Hackett added. He glared at Nihlus, but he did not appear to be conflicted by divided loyalties.

"Upon us all," the Turian agreed, "Garrus?"

"Sir?"

"Since you've worked in the past with miss Shepard, I trust both you and miss Danaan would be the most adequate guides for her and her crew on Citadel space."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ as always, **BrokenLifeCycle** contributed priceless criticism and reviewing. You have my thanks!


	19. Citadel: New command

Petra Nebula - Citadel space

Shepard walked into the crew quarters. "Have a minute?"

Lena put down the half-disassembled chronal accelerator she was working on. "Aye, luv, why not."

Aaliyah appraised her with a worried look before handing her a mug. "I thought you could use this."

Tracer smiled. "You never forgot about this, eh?"

A grunt. "Hard to forget that rocket fuel. Hell, who knows, in a pinch it would do if we ran out of helium-3."

Lena barked out a short laugh. "It takes that to keep me up and running, luv." She took a sip, then she withdrew again into her melancholy. "It's good, but still… nothing like Torbjörn's."

"I never dreamed of topping him." Shepard sipped her tea in turn. Her studious eyes did not veer off Tracer.

Lena did not need to ask what was Aaliyah looking at her for. "I'm sorry. It still has to sink in."

"It hit you the hardest," Shepard admitted. She bent her head slightly sideways and was about to ask something, then thought better of it.

"It takes me back… all the way to Gérard. When Talon got to him through Amélie we were all shocked for days." She raised her eyes to look at Aaliyah. They were still irritated. "I know, right, this is not what Zarya would have wanted. I just…"

Shepard sat next to her. "I know. You just can't. It's alright."

She laid a hand on Lena's shoulder. Such a gentle gesture would have been enough to make Tracer teary-eyed again, but apparently, she had run out of tears.

She stared blankly at the partially assembled contraption that served her as an anchor to the present instead. "Zeny told me… back on Earth, Zeny said I had to avoid becoming insensitive, but how… in a way, I'm relieved I still can cry… but a part of me is already so scarred that it… it hurts less than Winston's death. And I'm—I'm—" It turned out that she still had tears left, as they now glistened in her eyes. "It's happening, luv, don't you see? I'm going to become a walking corpse whether… whether I like it or not." A single sob wracked Lena.

Aaliyah hugged the crying girl, realizing she had missed something huge. She was sad about Zaryanova like everyone else and grieved for her — and, much worse, she had felt another piece of her humanity slip through her fingers.

And she had panicked.

"Yours is a choice I'd not like to have," Shepard admitted, ashamed of herself. "I wouldn't dare to say I'd do one thing over another… but seeing you, I believe it's better to accept the pain."

"I… I know. But it's… it just isn't there anymore, luv." Another sob.

Aaliyah held her tighter. "We're here for you."

"Yes, you are now… but in time—"

"Fuck 'in time,' girl!" Shepard snarled. "You want to keep your soul? Open it up to others. Let us help you shoulder your pain. The moment you start pushing people away, you'll have lost."

* * *

"How is she?" Layali Amari asked.

"Hurt… in a way I can barely understand." Shepard sat. Ziegler, Amari and Danaan shared the table with her. "But I do." A memory crossed her head which caused her to snort: "And I get it only because I have read stuff about people going through the same."

Anika blinked. "Other people?"

"Not real people. You'd have to pick up on your Anne Rice and be familiar with masquerades and requiems."

Danaan, having had a thorough look through Shepard's memories, understood it immediately — and refrained from saying anything about it. Aaliyah quickly noticed what was going through her head, and knew why she kept her silence, having also had a close look at Valena's mind. Those things were all too real for the Asari.

Tela Vasir walked into the mess hall, Garrus in tow. "Hello everyone," she greeted. "I have news."

Her tone told Shepard volumes. "Let me guess. You got stonewalled."

The Asari Spectre nodded curtly. "No amount of berating, threatening or cajoling could move the matriarchs. We'll have to go there in person."

"Not even Spectre authority sufficed," Anika noted.

"In theory, it's unrestricted. In practice, figures with enough clout can ignore or rebuff our requests," Vasir admitted.

"Different races, same old story," Amari commented dryly.

"We will have to go there personally to make our case. It's understandable that they're reluctant, though. Xenoarchaeology has yielded many critical scientific advances for centuries now. There is a lot of material still sealed and highly classified."

"Considering what's available from this Cirron woman, I can imagine," Anika agreed.

"I take it that there's no reaching out to this scientist directly either."

"She's on a dig site," Vasir replied to Shepard's comment. "We could go, but she won't disclose anything without the wherewithal from her sponsors. She'd be in a very delicate position if she did otherwise."

"Understandable," Aaliyah sighed, "however little it helps us out."

"There must be something else we can do," Anika argued.

"There is," Vasir agreed. "How is it that you call it? 'Plan B.' We look for other experts. Garrus?"

Vakarian tapped his omni-tool, bringing up a holographic image of a file. "This is doctor Liara T'Soni. She's a xenoarchaeology graduate from the University of Serrice, daughter of Matriarch Benezia."

Aaliyah frowned. "Benezia? The hawk? That's bad news."

"She's so young," Danaan noted on the spot.

"And prolific," Garrus added. "In her short life, she has already published several papers. She doesn't have much of a reputation, though — her colleagues think she is a hobbyist. Not that she seems to care; given her career history, she lives for her work. Her mother is a prominent figure in Asari politics and has a lot of exposure on the media, but Dr. T'Soni couldn't be more different. She keeps moving between dig sites all over the galaxy."

"There is something else about her that should be a matter of concern," Vasir added. "As you noted—" she glanced at Shepard "—Benezia has been advocating for a tougher position against the Alliance on increasingly harsh terms for the past few years. According to some fresh intel, a trigger for that progressive hardening of her stance was that she started sponsoring Saren."

Anika winced. "That does not bode well."

"A warhawk in league with a rogue Spectre," Amari said soberly. "No, it doesn't."

"Benezia has already sent people out to look for her daughter and bring her into the fold," the Asari Spectre informed. "She surely knows Dr. T'Soni can be used against her for leverage if the situation escalates. If they get to her first, whatever chance we have of using what she knows to unlock whatever message the Protheans left on their relic will vanish."

"It would seem we have our work cut out for us, then," Shepard concluded. "What's our next step?"

"Bau, Nihlus and I will go to Illium, and thence to Thessia. You should try to recruit Dr. T'Soni. We have already looked up where she is: your destination is Therum."

Amari blinked. "That's in Alliance space."

"She's conducting her expedition on Prothean ruins there thanks to the auspices of ambassador Goyle," Garrus detailed. "Her exact location was not disclosed for security reasons."

"We'll have to change ships," the jumpjet trooper mused.

"Last time I checked, Eclipse vessels were still barred from Alliance space," the Turian allowed.

"Getting an exception for one would raise a lot of suspicions… So, it's back to Erinyes for us?"

"For the time being, at least," Vasir concurred.

* * *

Shepard and Genji walked into the bridge. It was late in the night, according to the clocks. There were only two of those, one in synch with Arcturus time, and another with the Citadel.

"Colonel," Garrus welcomed Aaliyah. "Feeling uneasy?"

"You could call it that way," she replied. She was emotionally drained.

"Lena-sama is still very distraught," Genji explained. "We are all worried about her."

Vakarian grunted. "Can't say I don't understand."

"How is that so?" the ninja asked.

"Also lost people. Good comrades, good friends."

Something in Garrus' tone caused Shepard to hazard a guess: "Nobody won that war."

"What? Oh, no, I wasn't referring to that." Garrus stood up. The captain's seat seemed foreign to him. "Before I was a soldier, I served on the Citadel security service. You probably have heard of C-Sec."

Both Aaliyah and Genji nodded. "I have," the Japanese said.

Vakarian leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed. "You surely have heard a hundred times about how the Citadel is a place where everyone meets everyone, a shining example of harmony and peaceful coexistence between species that couldn't possibly be any more different." A snort. "Don't buy it. The Presidium sure looks like that, but there are places on the Wards where you'd be ill advised to go without a company of troops.

"There was one such place where a bunch of Krogan had holed up. Wrex, that fellow you brought, is the rarest kind of Krogan there is — he's _reasonable._ A depressingly large part of them are bloodthirsty bastards, whose idea of a worthy death is lying on a pool of their own blood surrounded by as many dead Salarians and Turians as they can manage. That kind of Krogan had muscled themselves into owning this slum, and used it to stage a terror campaign against anything that had even the slightest whiff of having been involved with the Rebellions." He shook his head. "That was bad."

Again, Danaan's borrowed memories flashed through Aaliyah's mind. Respectfully she asked, "How bad?"

"Bad enough that I picked up that small tidbit of wisdom I was telling you about earlier: there are places you don't go without a company of troops. We had two whole squads of heavy weapons teams, all military trained, all solid, reliable people. Only eight returned alive."

Genji was slowly learning how to read Turian facial expressions. "This one is personal to you. Am I mistaken?"

"No, you're not." A heavy nod. "I planned the whole operation myself."

 _Shit._ Out of all Turians, Vakarian was the one Shepard disliked the least, having seen first-hand the brute competence and leadership he was capable of. "Sorry to hear it. Really."

"Thanks." His voice distilled regret.

Genji dwelt for a few seconds on Vakarian's words before formulating his response. "I was once dispatched along with my master, Lena-sama, Zarya-sama, the old Overwatch commander and Anika's own mother to foil a terrorist plot. It was in London. Back then, the city was a hotbed for anti-omnic sentiment, and an organization had orchestrated an attack on one of their dwellings.

"They initiated their assault by whipping the locals into a riot. There were many hate groups against the omnics on that city then, so it was not hard for the terrorists to incite them. When we arrived, the omnics had barricaded themselves inside their compound… They did not know that they had played right into the terrorists' hands and exposed themselves to an EMP strike." Genji took a deep breath. "To stop the terrorists we had to quell the riot. It got violent, and ended in a bloodbath. That was one of the incidents used to charge Overwatch with excessive collateral damage."

"The Second King's Row Massacre," Shepard commented grimly.

Genji nodded. "Talon's involvement came to light many years after the episode. By then the UN had already stripped us from their mandate and driven us underground."

Vakarian looked at the Alliance agents with an odd expression. "If I understood you correctly, you are telling me you had to shoot violent rioters and terrorists to protect some synths."

"To us, they're equals, Vakarian," Aaliyah pointed out, both to make it clear to Garrus, and to quell the turmoil Danaan's memories had brought to her own mind. "I know it doesn't make any sense to you. Shimada-san here is nothing but a brain and some glands mounted on a fully cybernetic body."

The Turian bowed his head in apology. "You're right. Please excuse me." He sat again. "To us, it appears that you're reckless at best, but you know this already. I should not have brought it up."

"No offense taken, Vakarian-san," Genji said magnanimously. "It will be decades before we see eye to eye."

 _Supposing there's a way to bridge that gap on the first place,_ Garrus thought, but decided to keep it to himself. "We've all had to deal with awful things," he summed up. "I would like to ask why you had to opt for a cyberized body, if I may."

"Of course you may. I owe Mercy for it." When Vakarian stared in puzzlement, he clarified: "Oh, I meant Anika's mother. Back on Earth, my family is a clan of yakuzas and ninjas."

"Say again?"

Genji laughed good-naturedly. "These are Japanese terms. The yakuza are criminal syndicates, some more or less refined or brutal than the others. Ninjas are mercenary assassins and spies that originated during the medieval age of my country."

Vakarian made the Turian equivalent of a frown. "Ah, I remember now. I've heard of ninjas. They remind me of Asari commandos."

"It's quite accurate, actually," he allowed. "I was a rebellious and irresponsible youth, and the elders wanted me to take part in the clan's activities. They sent my brother to bring me to heel. We quarreled, argued loudly, and eventually came to blows. Hanzo-san thought he had killed me and lived for years in regret, but in truth, Angela found me and restored me, in exchange for my services as an Overwatch agent."

"Back then it was ground-breaking, but right now it's pretty much standard procedure for heavily injured vets," Shepard added, pointing at her own left arm. "My own father has prosthetic legs; he had to get them after his gunship was shot down. That didn't stop him from raising a family."

"You surely must have something like this," Genji asked.

"Not full-body replacements like you, but we do," Garrus replied. "Since the Morning War, Citadel people are scared of using cybernetics and robotics too much. That some hackers can kill by messing with implants doesn't help either. Besides, our medicine is advanced enough that we can grow organs and limbs for grafting, and we resort to cybernetics only when that's not an alternative."

"That's sensible," Shepard approved. "I was suggested an organic replacement for my arm, but it would have taken months."

"Oh. Well, who knows… if you had chosen that, maybe the First Contact War would have had a different outcome," Garrus jabbed amicably.

"I doubt it," Aaliyah replied with a smirk. "There were lots of good people fighting on our side then. Morrison, Zaryanova, Hana Song…"

The Turian nodded. "The original Overwatch team," he said respectfully.

Genji's heart swelled with pride when he noticed Vakarian's tone. "I see our reputation has transcended beyond Alliance borders."

"From this side, the Citadel thinks of your crew as the equivalent of the Spectres. I know that both the Salarian STG and the Asari commando teams hold you as worthy adversaries — which is no small feat."

"And what does the Hierarchy think?" Shepard asked.

"The same, with more resentment and fear thrown in," Garrus admitted. "In case you don't know, when the Hierarchy goes to war, our objectives are not limited to the conflict in particular. The ultimate goal is to make sure the adversary is never again a threat to Citadel interests, which is to say, to our interests."

Genji understood immediately. "If you had had your way you would have crushed us."

"Yes," Vakarian said freely. "You have to understand, the Hierarchy is a military juggernaut. Not even the Krogan stood up to us for long. That you did has scared people and bruised our collective ego."

 _That's something to remember,_ Aaliyah thought. She had already known that, however. Danaan's memories on the topic had been sobering.

* * *

Three hours later, Martinsson roused Shepard from her sleep: "Lady Doomfist, wake up. There's news."

Aaliyah groaned. "What's the crisis this time…?"

The blonde Astrid smirked. "Can't say you don't know your way around your job."

 _Just fucking great._ With an effort, she threw the covers aside. Two scant minutes later, still rubbing her eyes, she made her way to the combat information center, where Garrus, as acting CO, was already waiting. Danaan, Lena, Genji and the omnic engineers were there too.

"This just came in," Vakarian said curtly in the way of welcome. "It's keyed for your eyes only."

Shepard eyed him oddly and waited for the message to be retransmitted to her omni-tool. Then, before opening it, she took a look at the headers.

"We have a leak somewhere."

Garrus held a hand to his eyes, shaking his head. "Not _one_ joint mission and we _already_ have moles?"

"The message is keyed for me alright, but it's not from any Alliance personnel cleared for Compact stuff. Probably the sender itself is bogus." She glanced at Lumiscant. "The moment we're back on an Alliance port, fire up a CRITIC message to Hackett. He'll go nuts."

Then she opened the message. At first, she was puzzled — it was a star chart and the transcripts of some conversation. Those transcripts was superbly detailed, including grunts, coughs and comments depicting emotional states—

 _Shit!_ "Vakarian, you'll want to have a look at this." She forwarded the decrypted message back to him.

The Turian quickly scanned it, then raised his startled eyes to meet hers: "You think this is genuine?"

"It _could_ be a very crafty piece of disinformation, but… who'd be out to expose us? And what would be the practical consequence, other than a diplomatic storm? I mean, no one would chase us to shoot our asses, right?"

"On our side, not with Spectre backing," Garrus mused. "How fresh do you think this is?"

"It would be nice if it was as fresh as it gets. But I wouldn't count on it," she manifested. "Can we send an alert?"

"It will have to go through channels," was the unconvinced answer. "I don't say they'll obstruct it on purpose, but in the short term, the only result would be that they'd raise their combat readiness. Backup… that could take a while."

"Once more unto the breach," Shepard muttered. "Brulirea, get us the shortest possible route there."

The omnic studied the chart and the location. "It won't be as quick as you'd like, ma'am. We have to jump through several relays to get there."

"Then let's just hope it's fast enough."

The rest of the crew present was watching apprehensively. "What's happening, luv?" Lena asked.

"Our friend resurfaced, that's what," Aaliyah answered gruffly. "And if I'm to trust these transcripts then someone else isn't quite dead."

Tracer frowned in puzzlement, then read the message:

"Wait, what?"

* * *

 _Author's note:_ this chapter was meant to be much longer, but I resolved to cut this part and post it now since the next one is almost pure action and this would be out of place.

Many thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle,** **kishinokurobi** and Callista for their input and help.


	20. Citadel: Mêlée à Quatre

Iera system - Attican Traverse

Wrex was inspecting his venerable Claymore shotgun for one last time. The battle-scarred Krogan grunted: "I never thought I'd be running to the rescue of some Turians."

Shepard eyed him apprehensively. "Me neither. 'War makes strange bedfellows,' the saying goes." The final check on both hardlight projectors returned 'all green' for the fourth time, so she put down the weapon on her right hand and stared at Wrex: "We are gambling by bringing you along for the ride."

The reptilian humanoid gave her an equally reptilian glare. "You would be stupid if you weren't at least a little bit concerned."

"That is not helping," Garrus muttered. He was methodically reassembling a large caliber anti-materiel rifle.

"You'll have to take your chances, 'sir.'" Only the sarcasm on his voice colored Wrex's blank expression.

"We're now entering the orbit of Iera III," Brulirea informed over the intercom.

"Inform me the moment we have a visual," Shepard ordered. "Tracer, start her up!"

"Aye, luv, on it."

The walls of the armory vibrated and a low rhythmic thunder became clearly audible as the engines of their shuttle screamed to life.

Garrus jammed a fresh thermal clip on his rifle and holstered it. "Even with the exact coordinates it will be very hard to locate the spot," he warned.

"Let's just hope it's equally hard for the enemy to locate it," Layali said dryly.

The troopers marched out of the armory one by one, but before Shepard left Garrus grabbed her by the shoulder:

"I need to know more about this guy if we're going to stop him."

Inwardly she groaned, but she could not refuse the request. "I'll tell everyone the same on our flight planetside. Guns are useless against him; so far nothing has stuck."

* * *

"And what are we supposed to use if guns won't put him down?" Wrex asked sardonically. "Harsh language?"

"What is he, by the way?" Valena seconded the Krogan. "Nothing I've ever seen is capable of what he does." The question puzzled Shepard briefly — then she realised she had asked it for the benefit of her fellows.

"Biotics affect him, just like they do to anyone not protected by shields," she replied uneasily. "Both Garrus and I saw one of those awful banshee cyborgs pin him that way."

"As to… what he is," Anika added haltingly, "not even we ourselves know. The best guess is that he was somehow transformed by the initial research my mother did on nanites, but exactly what happened…" She shook her blond head.

"What kind of nanites were those?" Shilu'Vael asked. "Organic or synthetic?"

"Synthetic. A very primitive form of what we use today on our Caduceus devices."

The veteran Krogan nodded heavily. "Well, I can work with that. But he won't be alone down there, or is he just that dangerous?"

"Yes, he is that dangerous, and no, he won't be alone," Tracer replied quietly from the pilot seat. "At least one sharpshooter is down there with him."

"Plus a team of specialists, including at least one close quarters fighter, a sapper, and a hacker," Layali finished.

"Supposing our intelligence is accurate and this is not a trap," Genji noted warily.

"If that is the case, we shouldn't expect to make planetfall."

Lumiscant looked at the Turian. "I'm surprised to see how unconcerned you are about it."

Garrus shrugged. "We are already here. What happens next is out of our hands."

 _Don't rule Tracer out,_ Shepard thought, but kept it to herself. The last thing their pilot needed was the extra burden on her.

For some reason she glanced at Anika. _Was it wise to bring her along?_ Out of all the people there, she was the most valuable. For soldiers, a chance of violent death was part and parcel of the job, but, on top of a medic, she was a scientist.

"Brace for reentry," Lena warned mechanically. The shuttle started to shake violently. She gazed at the instruments, wrestling with the thick atmosphere of that planet, and hoping that nobody would pick that moment to shoot at them.

A warning message then lit up on her HUD: "Bloody hell… Vakarian," she asked, "would a Turian listening post actively track starships making for planetfall?"

"They wouldn't," was the immediately concerned answer. "Doing that would give them away."

"Well, someone is," she informed angrily. Then the warning message changed to a danger signal: "And whoever they are, they're pointing their guns our way."

A loud alarm then screeched out: "And now they're firing missiles at us!"

At once Layali released the clamps holding her flight suit securely to the bulkhead: "Heading and range?"

"Sent!"

Tracer's head was racing. The shuttle had barely been retrofitted with the MMI interface used by Alliance pilots to fly their craft, and the countermeasures available were those of a standard Citadel transport — in comparison, pitiful.

"Brulirea!" She barked.

"I'm on it." The ship had an EW suite, but there was nothing it could do that an AI could not do better.

"Everyone hold on and grab your barf bags!"

Warning lights turned on everywhere as Layali punched the manual override to open the boarding ramp. It did not budge. "You have to turn around!" she screamed at Tracer.

"We're still going too fast!" was the angry reply. "We need to descend to at least thirty thousand meters!"

"It's going to be one hell of a close call," Amari muttered with an edge.

"They're 91s," Lumiscant reported. "Trying to scramble."

"Score one for our intel source," Shepard breathed. The Mark 91 High Altitude Interceptor was a highly efficient, LAI-guided anti-voidcraft missile used specifically to repel targets on their reentry phase; Alliance doctrine called for their use as a backup for long-range direct energy guns or railguns — or as the to-go defensive weapon for short-time planetside deployments.

So unless the Turians had gotten their hands on Alliance ordnance, there was someone else down there.

"Someone clearly doesn't want anyone coming after them," Martinsson noted coolly. Other than trusting their pilot and her AI aides, there was nothing she could do.

At that point of their descent, there was little for Lena to do other than monitoring her instruments and hoping her omnic crew would succeed. For her fellows' sake. Like anyone else, she hated being shot at while she was flying, but in a coldly logical way — all pilots learned to control the primal terror that came with that, but in Tracer's case, there was nothing to struggle with.

She had reached a point where, regarding herself, death was a philosophical matter. If she lived, well, that was it. If she was killed now, she would get to see whether there actually was an afterlife or not…

But the people around her had no such luxuries.

 _Someday, maybe someday soon. But not today._

"Girls, we need what you do now," she breathed with an edge at the omnics _._

"I almost got it, ma'am… yes. We have override," Lumiscant announced triumphantly. Below and ahead of them, bright dots appeared in the sky where the missiles self-destructed.

"Don't claim victory just yet." Amari had patched into the sensor feeds and caught the moment when two more missiles leaped upwards towards them, then two more. "Tracer!"

"One minute to safe altitude!"

* * *

Reaper watched the shuttle on his own omni-tool with mixed feelings, as it abruptly turned around to present its side to the incoming ordnance — and a tiny metal blue silhouette jumped out of the boarding ramp, to flare with twin dots of blinding light. Long steam trails streaked across the sky from this new silhouette and towards the missiles. Two big flashes erupted as they exploded.

 _So that's who they are._

Angrily he killed the feed. Not only had they wasted their shots. That was not a fight he was looking forward to.

"Hold the missiles," he muttered at their artillery technician and sapper.

The big, blond, square-jawed man argued, "We can overwhelm them, sir, they can't have that much—"

"I said hold them." His voice became even lower — and even more menacing.

Next to them, Miranda Lawson looked on in conflict, but eventually she judged it best to support Reyes. "We may need the remaining missiles on the way out."

The man quailed before Reaper. "Sir."

They were on the bed of one of several dry streams that had cut deep into some rocks, creating a series of very tight, crevasse-like canyons. The streams had crossed path in several places, which they had marked as ideal emplacements for their anti-aircraft battery.

Reyes turned to the other members of the squad Cerberus had assigned him: besides Miranda and Richter, the sapper, there were Tomoe, a small, lean and exceptionally agile close quarters fighter, and Neves, their slicer, who for a hacker was surprisingly fit and spright. "Move the battery to site B," he ordered to the Brazilian. "I don't want them finding it and blowing it up."

Neves nodded in silence, jumped aboard the tracked vehicle, and drove off. The rest followed Reaper the other way through the canyon.

"You believe the Turians will react to the launches?" Lawson asked of Richter.

The sapper shook his head. "This is close to Alliance space. I would chalk it up to mercs or scavengers fighting over a hideout or minerals. They will be more alert, though."

A low thunder rumbled through the canyons. Three kilometers away, Amélie decided sending a warning was worth the interception risk: "They're coming this way."

Gabriel stopped and listened. Clearly the engine roar was growing louder.

He keyed his mike: "Neves, is that shuttle armed?"

"I don't think so, sir, it didn't look like it had been refitted to carry weapons," the answer came. "That's a Humpback, an old Turian design. Great for carrying troops, but no gunship."

A brief exchange of glances between Reyes and Miranda, and then Reaper keyed Widowmaker. "You know what to do."

Amélie rebelled at the idea, but Widowmaker prevailed. _If they are misguided enough to render aid to the enemy, it's not my problem._

* * *

"We're closing in on the launch site," Lena informed.

"Most likely they're gone." Lumiscant was examining the terrain through the shuttle's sensor suite. "But they can't be far."

"Hiding a missile launcher on those canyons is child's play," Shepard muttered. "Still, that's our best bet."

Wrex scowled. "Tell me again why we aren't simply broadcasting an alert for your Turians to pick up."

"We are," Garrus replied. "But would you rely only on that?"

Brulirea borrowed Amari's eyes. The jumpjet trooper was slowing down her descent, using the jets on her flight suit as brakes, but her attention was on the same jumble of crevasses and canyons before the shuttle.

"Mind your approach, Layali," Anika warned her. She could not stop thinking about the dreaded sniper that had almost killed her friend's grandmother.

"Copy." Amari's response was curt but not as dry as usual. She knew Ziegler was worried, and Widowmaker was also on her mind. She was going about it as analytically as always, checking the wind, using the shuttle before and below her to mask her presence, all standard procedures—

* * *

—procedures her enemy was familiar with. Layali filled her sights, the muzzle pointed at her chest. Even at such an extreme range, the jumpjet trooper was dead to rights.

What bothered her was that the shot would expose her. Even if the active camouflage would compensate and cloak her again almost immediately, the geometry of the shot would make her position as obvious as if she was out in the open.

Which she was, by the way. With enough time she could reconnoitre the place, find a hideout close by to shelter in, but time was the one thing they had not had.

 _How did they know?_

The threat posed by a mole was immense and there was only one way to know—asking them. To that end, killing the target now…

The sniper realised she was hesitating.

It was a sensation she had forgotten.

 _Why?_

She scanned her target attentively. There was nothing exposed, not even the eyes. And yet she still saw the _wedjat_ tattoo on the brown skin.

Again Amélie reasserted herself. Widowmaker struggled for control, but failed.

* * *

The AI urgently flashed a danger signal and highlighted something on a small shrub-covered mesa. At once Layali realized she was being targeted and swiveled her railgun to bring it to bear—

—and her shot came out just as alarms started blinking and ringing, the impact sending her on a wild corkscrew spin: "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY! I'm going in, I'm going in! MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY!"

* * *

There was a thunderous blast and a cloud of dust and splinters rose as the high-powered round missed Widowmaker by scarcely half a meter — the kinetic energy of the impact blowing her away from her vantage point and sending her in a free fall down into a chasm. She twisted in midair, fired her grappling hook at the closest wall, and steeled herself for the impact; her shields cushioned the blow, but it still was more than enough to knock her unconscious.

* * *

Both Brulirea and Lumiscant acted swiftly. The first patched into her suit and worked with the onboard AI to try and stabilize her, but the railgun slug had blasted outright through a rocket booster and a set of control thrusters, making that a difficult proposition at best.

"Where did that come from?" Shepard bellowed.

"I'm on it!" The second omnic engineer was triangulating the point of origin. "There!"

Danaan lifted the metal frame keeping her securely seated: "Bring us closer to her!"

Tracer did not object. She spun the shuttle around towards the out-of-control Layali.

The Asari commando hollered: "I need the side door open!"

"And expose yourself to the shooter?" Garrus protested.

"Unless she's got a jump pack she can't switch positions so fast, not to mention stay cloaked the whole bloody time!" Lena snapped. "Open the door!"

Anika looked in wonder, knowing what was going to happen — but never having witnessed it firsthand. As the door slid open, Valena turned ablaze with blue light, and a bubble radiated from her, quickly growing in size, until it was twice as big as the whole shuttle. Jaws clenched tight, the Asari stretched out a hand towards Amari, as if reaching out to grab her — and, in a quick motion, pulled her fist backwards. Layali was violently drawn towards the shuttle, herself wrapped in blue fire, until she was well within the protective sphere.

"I have her!" Danaan said painstakingly through gritted teeth.

Genji shouted, "Lena, put the craft down! Fast!"

* * *

Miranda queried Widowmaker's omni-tool. The video feed only showed a wall of naked rock. "Maartens? McMahon?"

"We're here, ma'am," the Dutchman replied. "We got a visual on Lacroix, but she's out cold."

"Is she wounded?" Reyes asked quietly.

"Doesn't seem to be, sir, at least not from here. Her readings are stable," McMahon answered. "The enemy has touched down about a klick away from us. It's ill advised to attempt a rescue right now."

"Stay sharp," Miranda ordered. "If she doesn't come back to her senses soon wait until the enemy has moved on to rescue her. If they approach don't engage."

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

"I'm fine. I'm fine, I tell you!" Angrily Layali tried to push Anika away.

Ziegler glared stonily at her patient. "Are we going about this again?"

It was far from the first time she had taken care of Amari. Oftentimes she refused any attention, especially since she had gotten cyberized — and always Anika had to remind her that the fact that her cybernetic body had a ton of redundancies built in did not mean that her few organic parts had not sustained damage.

So Layali's eyes blazed, but she did not lash out. "Alright, do your thing."

The rest of the crew watched but kept their distance, even Valena. Ziegler had helped Amari out of her wrecked flight suit, which Lumiscant the omnic engineer was working on. Outside of her suit, Layali was indistinguishable from a normal human, and strikingly similar to her mother and grandmother. Tracer always dwelt on that fact, but thankfully the youngest Amari was not like her ancestors to a point that would cause her issues. She was distinctly icy and biting in demeanor, but underneath all that there was a golden heart — one anyone wanting to reach would have to dig deep for.

Meanwhile, Garrus and Shepard studied the surrounding area using scans provided by their mothership. "I take it that no one acknowledged our broadcast," Aaliyah assumed matter-of-factly, and did not wait for a reply from her counterpart: "Vakarian, you're the Turian here. If someone ordered you to set up shop in this place, where would you do it?"

Garrus frowned. "There are no obvious buildings visible here… that means you go for portable cloaking field generators… or go underground… or you use a cave."

The Quarian girl overheard that. "If they had to broadcast their data we could use it to track them down."

"Give it a try, but I doubt it. Standard protocol for covert outposts is to relay reports via tightbeam to a satellite and thence to comm buoys."

"But they can't communicate with patrols and the like on the same way," Shilu'Vael argued. "Tightbeam requires a direct line of sight. It's almost impossible to maintain it on this kind of terrain."

"Supposing they had patrols in the first place, which I doubt in this case," Garrus retorted. "One way to avoid that problem is to set the transceiver on a vantage point with a good field of view, but yes, radios are kept as an emergency backup."

Wrex was watching from a distance, but everyone heard him snort. "Think like mercs or raiders. That's the kind of people who'd set foot here. And any of them would have a good escape plan."

Garrus and Shepard exchanged looks. "He's right," she admitted.

"I agree," Vakarian seconded. "So they would need a secluded place for a shuttle to land safely."

"That probably means here." Shepard pointed at a depression where a body of water had once been, next to a promontory that overlooked the surrounding landscape.

Garrus, Shilu'Vael and Wrex all looked at the spot. The Krogan shrugged. "As good a place to start as any."

* * *

"This is the spot," Miranda confirmed.

The sapper stepped forward and unslung his backpack from his shoulders. Everyone followed suit. The mission critical gear was far smaller than the shuttle and the tracked missile launcher: a series of low-yield fusion charges.

Tomoe the close quarters fighter cloaked and silently made her way towards the dry lake bed near which they believed the entrance to the enemy compound would be. Neves was still with their anti-aircraft battery and was keeping an eye on the area using a small satellite deployed beforehand to that end.

Miranda and Reaper stood close to their sapper. "It's a sure thing they heard the broadcast," Richter commented. "Now we just have to see what they're going to do about it."

"Expect a visit," Reaper replied quietly. If they had deployed passive surveillance —and most likely they had, Turians were professional to a fault—, they could not miss the squad about to deploy an explosive charge to blast a way into their outpost. The enemy shuttle had searched the area around them a few times, but so far they had not found them.

Or maybe they had and they were heading for an ambush.

And so the alert did not surprise him: "I got movement," Neves reported quietly. "Turian squad, half platoon strength, heading one-zero-nine, distance sixteen hundred meters. Hustling your way."

Miranda keyed her mike: "Team-2, status."

"I'm on my way to your position, ETA 3 minutes," came Maartens' reply. "McMahon is attempting to recover Lacroix."

"Neves, is there anything else I should know?" Reaper asked dryly.

"The enemy shuttle has landed about a klick from your position, bearing one-one-one. No enemy personnel visible."

 _They have made contact,_ Reyes concluded coldly. This complicated matters. He did not want to fight his old enemies, but he had a mission to accomplish.

* * *

Garrus warned quietly, "Everyone stay calm. Nice and easy now."

Reaper's assumption was inaccurate, but by a slim margin, and it would soon be correct. Half a dozen troopers, all in cover and on diverse positions encircling the shuttle on the depression, uncloaked at once.

All in cover except for the one in front of them. The Turian glared at the newcomers from behind the sights of his assault rifle. "Identify."

Vakarian took one step forward. "I'm Garrus Vakarian, adjutant and operative in the service of Nihlus Kryik, Special Tactics and Recon. My fellows are Valena Danaan, my colleague under Tela Vasir, and colonel Aaliyah Shepard from Starwatch, Systems Alliance."

After a few instants, the trooper facing them relaxed and untrained his weapon. "Avitus Rix. I didn't know Nihlus was conducting joint operations with the Alliance." The biting edge on his words communicated what he thought about it loudly and clearly to everyone.

Garrus tilted his head slightly sideways. "If you know Nihlus, you are aware he tends to go for unorthodox methods."

Rix scowled. "State your business. You've already ruined our operation by landing here so forgive me if I don't sound welcoming."

Now it was Aaliyah who spoke. "We're working together to unmask the party responsible for the attack on Elysium. Some extremist elements on our side have planned an attack against your listening post. We were forewarned and came here to stop it."

The Turian looked stonily at her. "Generous of you. But we don't need your 'help.' And you're too late in any case. My men are closing in on the intruders as we speak."

Aaliyah's blood chilled. "How many men have you got? And how many are they?"

"You don't need that information."

"No, you're right, I don't, but you do. I have reason to believe you don't know what you're up against."

Rix kept his cold eyes on Shepard, then glanced momentarily at her Asari and Turian fellows.

"You would be wise to listen to her," Danaan said simply.

* * *

Maartens waited until the head of the trooper lugging the grenade launcher had filled his sights to pulled the trigger. The rifle kicked his shoulder, and immediately he ducked into cover, not waiting to confirm his kill — and it served him in good stead, because almost instantly the thunder of a large caliber rifle boomed and a slug narrowly missed his scalp.

Quickly he inspected the recording of his scope and declared his shot: "Enemy trooper down. I'm pinned down here."

"I got a fix on them," Tomoe spoke. She was on the rear of the enemy squad, watching them maneuver. The shooter that had almost gotten Maartens was perched on a high point herself: "Two-man sniper team. Engaging."

At that time, automatic fire exploded on the gorge as Reaper broke cover and raked the enemy ranks with submachine gun fire. The hail of bullets sent rock splinters everywhere. The Turians, startled by the sniper, had dug in; they returned fire accurately, but as Shepard predicted, they were unaware about the nature of their adversary.

The heavy rifle boomed again, piercing Reaper's smoky form — the distraction giving Tomoe a perfect opening. Cerberus close quarters specialists were codenamed Phantoms, trained and equipped to do exactly what the woman did: somersault to the enemy position while cloaked, stab one of the shooters, fire a pistol point-blank at the other, and slink away—

—but one of their comrades saw her and shouted a warning. Another swiveled around, spotted the exposed Tomoe and took aim—

—only to have his arm torn off by Maartens' shot—

—who had risked too much to save the Phantom. A short burst transfixed him, punching his shoulder and lower neck, and blasting his helmet to pieces. Neves alerted: "Maartens is down!"

Reaper did not acknowledge the warning. He simply stood up and walked towards the enemy troopers, firing as he did. The weapons —aptly named Locusts by their manufacturer— were unusually docile and precise for small arms, making short work of a Turian that had done what he had been trained to do — expose the least possible, take good aim, and shoot, except that this enemy could not be felled by means of gunfire. Another one followed suit seconds later.

Tomoe seized the distraction to finish what she had started. She waited, cloaked, while the shooters relocated to put distance between themselves and Reaper, then struck at them as they ran right in front of her — with better luck this time, as it took only two vicious stabs to put them down.

The remaining troopers quickly saw they could not win that fight, and disengaged — or tried to. Reyes shifted into a smoky cloud and consumed one of them, down to the metal plates on his skin, then another, and was merely content with disabling the other two, so he could grab one by the collar of his armor and lift him off the floor—

That was familiar. The stark terror in those eyes. He had seen it before. But on human faces, not alien ones. It was an odd moment for Sombra's words to haunt him…

 _Their problem. They struck first. So now reckoning has come, too bad for you._

"Tell me where the entrance to your base is, and I _may_ let you live."

In the meantime, Tomoe was treating Maartens. To her immense relief, the helmet's many layers of armor had absorbed the shot that would had otherwise gone straight under his right eye. The combination of shields, armor and shock-absorbing vests had saved the sniper.

"It was foolhardy, what you did," the Phantom said as she examined the bruises. "Hold on. It'll improve in a while." Tomoe pulled out a syrette from her first aid kit and stabbed it on the sniper's naked and bruised shoulder.

Almost on the spot, Maartens' strained face relaxed. "Thank you."

The dour girl accepted it with a perfunctory nod. "No. Thank _you_."

Reyes watched the man stand up ungainly, and queried the member of Team-2 who had remained behind to rescue Lacroix. "Report."

"I got her, sir," came the answer. "She's got a concussion. I'm seeing to it now."

The masked assassin nodded to himself. "Keeping her safe is your first priority. We will manage here."

"Sir," Neves cut in urgently, "we have more ships on a reentry vector. ETA 8 minutes."

"How many of them?"

"Six, sir."

Behind his mask, Reaper scowled. _Too many for our remaining load. Supposing they fare better than the ones we already fired._ "Hold your fire," he instructed, then looked at Richter: "Get those charges placed. We're running out of time here."

* * *

The thunder of a detonation roared, and tons of rock rained down on the cavern floor below. Immediately afterwards, a spherical recon droid was thrown down through the newly made crevasse.

Richter gave his verdict: "It's all clear, though most likely we've set off every alarm on kilometers around."

"They would hear it in any case. Let's go."

Reaper simply jumped down, followed by Tomoe first and by Richter later, with Maartens keeping them covered from the ceiling, hanging upside-down from a grappling hook. The cavern was roughly fifteen meters wide at its broadest point and a depot of some kind, stacked with crates and containers, warning lights set on the walls. A metal door was set on the end of a roughly hewn passageway.

Leapfrogging between covers, they first made their way to the wall on which the passageway had been dug. Maartens rappelled down then, and once she had a vantage position to snipe at whatever got that door open, they approached it. It was securely locked.

"Neves, we're patching you through," Tomoe notified the slicer.

"Roger. It will be a few seconds."

True to his word, the door hissed as the locking mechanisms disengaged and it opened inwards a few seconds later. It led into another freshly dug passageway, fluorescent lights lining both sides at even intervals. Doors were set at both ends. Reaper looked left, then right, noticed where the cables powering the lights led…

Reyes frowned behind his mask. "Something isn't right here."

Lawson agreed. "We're being expected. Turians aren't so careless."

"You stay put." Reaper strode into the corridor and walked towards the left door. If there was an ideal place to contain an assault, this was it: a completely naked passageway without cover on any kind.

This hunch was proven right as the door behind him slid open and a hail of gunfire raked him. He turned on his heel and raced towards the shooters, weapons in hand; the Turians fired with abandon at him, but seeing that he still was coming, eventually sealed the door shut again.

"Get the other door," he ordered to the others, and shifted into a cloud again, looking for miniature spaces to slip through, but the door was hermetically sealed—

—but it unexpectedly slid open, and he found himself trapped into the pull of a black coruscating orb. Three of the aliens rained hot plasma and more biotic attacks on him, causing the orb to spectacularly detonate — and his form to melt away into smoke.

"Reyes is injured," Miranda coolly warned the others. "Tomoe, get those specialists. Richter and I will cover you."

The sapper opened up in a barrage with his assault rifle to keep the defenders away from the doorway, giving the Cerberus officer an opening to create a singularity of her own where Reaper had been. One of the defenders was caught on its pull, and the sapper used the chance to toss a sphere down the corridor — and it grew in size until it became a giant hardlight sphere that barreled down the passageway, shredding the hapless Turian to gibs.

Right behind the sphere charged the cloaked Phantom, but another of the avian humanoids spotted the blur and shouted a warning before unleashing an electrical discharge. Tomoe was caught in full by the blast, ruining her stealth and shorting out her shields — but still full of adrenaline, she willed a hardlight whip and an omni-blade into existence and hurled herself at her assailant, the Turian following suit. What should have been a quick dispatching of the foe devolved into a chaotic melee as the Phantom and the alien defender pitted themselves against each other. Lawson and Richter pressed the attack, the latter firing her his rifle and the former casting her biotics at the other Turians to keep them from smoking the Phantom—

Reaper reformed near Miranda. She noticed him by the corner of her eye, too focused on her onslaught to afford a distraction; he looked as if he was only partially solid—

—but then, something happened that _did_ merit her attention: the door on the other end of the hallway opened, and the Cerberus officer found herself staring into Tracer's eyes.

* * *

Lena recognised Reaper's half-solid form: "There they are!"

Genji charged ahead. Miranda pulled back into the passageway through which they had entered the base — but not fast enough. The ninja literally whizzed past her, the edge of his blade almost biting through her armor and its butt striking Richter viciously on the back of his head. The matter that the sapper was at least twenty centimeters taller than Genji and proportionally bulkier did not stop him from being smashed against the wall by the force of the hit.

Miranda rolled away from the ninja, blazed blue, stretched out a hand at him, and pulled hard. The biotic projection yanked Genji like a ragdoll towards the Cerberus officer, who at once tossed another bolt of blue at him. The blast sent him flying away, but he deftly twisted in midair and instead of being smashed against the other end of the corridor, he landed with both feet on the wall, pounced forward like a spring, and again darted forward at her. Now, however, Lawson waited, keeping a sliver of her mind focused on Tracer and Reaper as they duelled, and timed her backlash defense perfectly: there was no time for Genji to react and he crashed headfirst into her barrier, to end up being ricocheted away like a pinball.

But Miranda was not up against the Starwatch agents alone. Behind the ninja came charging a screaming hulk of red, scales and teeth. She saw the Krogan coming and hurled a dart-like attack at him; the biotic lance caused him to flinch, but nothing else, and he riposted with a blast of his own. Her barriers absorbed it, but the huge alien kept on coming. Two trigger pulls caused her defense to short out just before he crashed onto her: the impact sent her flying — right into Genji's way. The ninja caught her before she hit the ground, and had her head immediately on a vise.

Reyes saw this, noticed Danaan's and Shepard's figures coming through the doorway, and quickly realized they were outmatched and cornered. He could still turn into smoke, but the Asari would see him coming and neutralizing him would not be a challenge for a biotics specialist and a hardlight engineer. He coldly resigned himself and dropped his weapons. "You win."

Tracer's reaction was one of stunned suspicion. "Bollocks. Where are your blokes?"

"If they were here they'd have found you already."

Tomoe was still full of fight and holding her own against the three Turians around her, but the defender she was fighting was stubbornly skilled, and now she was alone and without backup. She bowed to the inevitable, jumped out of the fray and raised her hands in surrender.

Rix acknowledged this and gestured at his fellows to disarm her. Then he headed to the corridor where the Starwatch crew had subdued the rest of the Cerberus hit squad.

"You were right," he said simply to Shepard.

She accepted this with a nod. "I wish I wasn't." Her mind was focused on something totally different right now, and on the effort it took to conceal it: _a *HUMAN* biotic?! Just where did she come from?!_ She noticed the attentive looks Miranda was getting from the Citadel personnel there and realized they were equally surprised.

"I'll make it a point to listen to your advice, even if I don't end up following it." Then he turned to the attackers. "I don't know who you are or what you hoped to do here. But you, know this. I myself handpicked and trained the troopers you killed. That makes me a _very angry_ Spectre right now. So don't give me any more reasons. Talk."

Then the first rumbling tremors reached them. At once Rix's omni-tool chirped urgently: "Sir! We got more incoming hostiles!"

Tracer glared icily at Reaper. "So there they were."

The man raised his hands very slowly, under the irate gaze of both Alliance and Citadel troopers, and removed his mask. Now not Reaper but the gruff Gabriel Reyes instead, he denied: "We only had one shuttle."

At Garrus' gesture, Danaan blazed blue, her right fist clenched tight and almost white hot. "This is not the time for lying."

He turned to face the Asari, unafraid. And laughed insolently. "If that's supposed to be a threat, you will have to do a lot better." Then he stared in challenge, baiting her. "Go on. You think that will change my tune?"

"Where is she?" Anika asked. "Where is Amélie?"

Reyes' face softened almost imperceptibly. The younger Mercy was a spitting image of her mother.

"She was hurt," he answered. "Your friend almost got her with her shot." He felt the sudden and unexplainable impulse to add that Widowmaker could have killed her easily if she had wanted to, but he stopped himself. _Who would believe it?_

Then Miranda's own omni-tool vibrated.

Genji noticed it. "Answer it," he ordered quietly. He did not have to add what would happen if she tried to trick them.

Miranda acknowledged the implied threat with her eyes, then: "Maartens?"

"Are you alright, ma'am?"

She interrogated her captor with a glare but he made no gesture. "We've made contact with the defenders," she said neutrally. "What's going on out there?"

"I see two — no, scratch that, three gunships, ma'am, and three shuttles unloading troops about half a klick from the main entrance. I estimate they're fifty men, say again, five-zero men."

"Identity?"

"They're… not Alliance forces, ma'am. I see Salarians and Turians… and… ma'am, there are humans among them too."

Miranda's eyes bulged briefly in surprise. "Where are McMahon and Lacroix?"

"On cover, ma'am, watching out for our ride and the battery."

"Get Team-2 in position to support extraction," she ordered. "Stand by for further orders."

"Roger."

She closed the channel. "You are very optimistic about your chances," Rix noted with cold irony.

Miranda returned his glare, unafraid, despite her precarious position. "You have, at most, ten troopers, which added to the Starwatch squad could perhaps total twenty. A single platoon, with no heavy weapons to speak of, cornered inside your own installation, against two, maybe three times as many, plus air cover. Whether you could survive or not depends largely on the goals of your enemy. If they aren't interested in taking prisoners they could simply saturate the area with low-yield ordnance." She made a brief pause for effect, then added, looking at the rest as she spoke: "I have a team of three snipers hiding in those hills, plus a SAM battery. If we play our cards well we could all leave this place."

"And you would walk away free for your assistance."

"I didn't pretend to set terms beforehand," was her cool retort to Rix's quip. "What you do with us you can decide later. Right now you cannot afford to refuse our help. And we cannot afford not to offer it."

Garrus was not convinced. "What guarantees your assassin won't try to smoke us out the moment the threat is dealt with?"

Reyes replied icily, "I could have killed you back in those mines. You're still breathing. Think."

Wrex grunted his contempt. "Less talking, more shooting. The more we spend here yammering, the harder it will be to fight our way out."

Vakarian, Rix and Danaan exchanged glances. Finally the Asari turned to Shepard. "The Krogan has a point."

"I agree," Aaliyah said forcefully. "Release them."

Uneasily Genji let go of Miranda. The Cerberus officer rubbed her neck for a second, then nodded. "Those gunships must be dealt with if we're to break out of here. I propose using our sharpshooter team to bait them into a trap. Our SAM battery will take them out."

"If you have -91s, it will have to be perfectly timed," the Starwatch commander objected coolly, trying to balance her healthy suspicions of this woman with the need to work together. "Those things aren't meant to engage low-flying targets."

Shilu'Vael had not taken part in the engagement, but she intervened now: "Why not call our ship down from orbit? Surely it's got guns enough to swat them."

Garrus thought about it. "The closer they get to it, the harder it will be. What kind of gunships are those?"

Rix sent a few queries and got a response on his omni-tool. "Mantis gunships."

Vakarian swore. "Fabulous. Those things can run circles around a corvette." He queried the omnic engineers: "Lumiscant? What about our shuttle? Is it safe?"

"For the time being," came the reply. "We've almost finished repairing Amari's suit."

Miranda stared without blinking. "A corvette."

"A Lancer-class," Garrus clarified, as coolly as Shepard.

"They're not that good against atmospheric craft," Rix mused. "We need to create a distraction."

Shepard considered this. "Oxton and Shimada are the best ones we got to that end. He… Reyes is also perfect for the task. Amari could provide backup."

"Also her." The Turian Spectre pointed at the lean, wiry Cerberus Phantom. Tomoe stared back.

"Ahem." Wrex cleared his throat and looked on with a vicious gleam in his eye.

Miranda could not object. She tapped her omni-tool: "Sending the keys to our channels now."

Still reluctantly, Shepard nodded. "Alright. Let's get this moving."

* * *

Amélie gave a slow, methodical look around the cranny she had chosen. It overlooked the empty lake bed and had a direct view to the crevasse leading into the caves where the Turians had established their outpost. To her right, on the other side of the depression, the attackers were streaming out of another defile and running to set up positions around the crevasse. She could not see the gunships, but the rhythmic cadence of their engines echoed against the rocks.

" _Je suis en position,_ " she reported quietly.

"Roger that," a female voice she did not know acknowledged her. "Do you have visual on the raiders?"

" _Affirmatif._ They are setting up positions around the entrance."

"Any heavy weapons visible?"

A quick glance was enough. "Portable mass accelerator cannons and missile launchers."

An alien voice spoke on the channel then. Her translator processed it: "That should be enough."

"Team-2, listen up," Miranda commanded. "Friendlies will create a distraction so we can seize these weapons and shoot down the gunships. Your primary task is to support the fireteams in charge of capturing the weapons, but feel free to engage targets going after the diversionary strike force if needs be. Watch your fire."

"Understood."

"Acknowledged."

" _Compris._ "

Widowmaker briefly wondered how they planned to break out. The raiders —who were they?— were setting up a formidable perimeter. She had already selected her first targets, and painted them on their private squad network for the benefit of her fellow snipers: the enemy sharpshooters would have to go first, followed by any trooper displaying biotics.

What they wanted with the place, she could not tell either, but clearly they were after something inside, for they had enough combined firepower to simply collapse the caves themselves. She relayed this observation to Miranda while a part of her mind struggled to understand. How her squad and the 'friendlies' planned to break out eluded Amélie. Turians were notoriously difficult to deceive with cloaking technology, which was pretty much the only way to approach the enemy undetected right now—

A bolt of trailing light zapped out of the gorge leading to the Turian stronghold, then in incredibly fast succession jumped all over the dry lake bed. The raiders, caught by surprise, dove for cover, probably thinking of it as a rare biotic attack, but as the bolt whizzed past a trooper manning a missile launcher, there was the buzzsaw-like sound of high-velocity automatic fire, and the trooper's head turned to mush.

The sniper reacted without so much as a knowing half-smile. Her sights centered on one of her original targets, a sharpshooter struggling to acquire whoever was attacking them, and she pulled the trigger. Automatically she switched to another target as she heard her teammates firing on their own.

The attackers erupted in chaos, and at that moment a black, billowing cloud emerged from the gorge as Reaper moved in to join the fray. Quickly she scanned the battlefield for blue flashes, but Tracer —for it was her, who else could move that fast?— also was looking for that, and Amélie had just acquired and sighted a biotic when Lena blazed right past her target, leaving a leaky mess of a corpse behind.

The raiders struggled to react, and the Cerberus sniper team used the opportunity to relocate, for the rhythmic sounds of the gunships were getting closer now and they would appear at any moment. Enemy shock troopers charged at Tracer, leaving trails of blue-white light and smoke behind them, but they failed to connect; still, those shock troopers were too sturdy for her machine pistols to bring down in one burst, but Reaper came behind her. The raider forces retreated from their defensive positions around the gorge, seeking shelter on the nearby canyons.

Some did not reach that shelter. As Tracer and Reaper ravaged the enemy infantry, Shimada and Tomoe used the opportunity to cut down the troopers lugging the heavy weapons they were after. "Objective is secure," the Phantom reported.

"That's our call, people! Let's get out there!" Shepard hollered, and after activating her squad-shield she exited the tunnels and entered the gorge leading to the dry lake bed. Rix, Wrex, Garrus, Valena, Martinsson and Miranda lined up behind her.

"Enemy gunship approaching fast from your side!" McMahon alerted over the radio.

"Team-2, focus your fire on it," Lawson ordered on the spot.

" _Affirmatif,_ " Widowmaker acknowledged coolly. It was one thing to shoot foot soldiers. Disabling or bringing down a gunship with sniper fire was another whole can of worms. A mental command brought up an image of the battlefield on her visor, the positions of friendlies and enemies marked on it. She noted where her fellow sharpshooters were and ordered: "McMahon and Maartens, fire at the tail thrusters. Coordinate for exposure." This maneuver was used, as Lacroix had said, to expose weak points in targets: whoever shot last had to wait until the gunship had turned to face the first shooter.

Regrettably, one battlefield maxim stated that the enemy should never be expected to cooperate in the creation of the ideal engagement, and its ugly wisdom was proved right again this time. As the Mantis gunship hovered over the gorge, it pivoted to bring its guns to bear on Shepard's squad, and as it did it briefly exposed its tail thrusters to McMahon, who took the chance on the spot and fired a high-powered round at it. The shot blew right through the thruster in a blast of smoke and shrapnel, but the gunship crew disregarded the damage to pound at their target.

Being deep in the gullet of the gorge meant Shepard and her team were difficult but not impossible to hit, and her squad-shield could only defend from a Gatling gun for so long. "We're fish in a barrel here!"

Martinsson ran to lend the strength of her generator to that of her commander's, but it was clear it would not suffice. Garrus took aim, targeted the cycling barrels spitting slugs at them, and fired. As with all Turian guns, his rifle was more powerful and refined than that of the human shooter, and it made short work of the gun mechanism — causing the gunship to switch to firing its rockets at them. Both Miranda and Valena saw this coming and raised bubble-like barriers to meet the attack, but even the might of their combined defenses was not enough to stop the barrage. Both shields collapsed and one rocket slipped through — exploding to devastating effect on the cramped quarters of the gorge. Shilu'Vael's left arm and leg were blown away.

"The Quarian is down! Mercy!"

Wrex slung the screaming girl over his shoulder and retreated back to the tunnel entrance, where Ziegler at once got to work on trying to stabilize her — which was no easy task since Caduceus nanites were nowhere nearly as efficient on organisms with different chirality and medi-gel was a big no-no.

Miranda winced and blinked to clear her eyes from the blinding pain, the feedback from her collapsed barrier nearly overpowering her. "We can't protect again against that kind of firepower!"

Lacroix and Maartens fired again — Widowmaker targeting the main air intake and her colleague the other thruster. The shots were more effective this time around. Deprived of both fine control thrusters and with one of its two engines compromised, the gunship could now only take aim with difficulty, and struggled to remain in position — and, in doing so, it presented a perfect target for Tomoe, who, protected by the rest of the flankers, had maneuvered a mass accelerator cannon into position and taken aim. The hundred-gram iron-tungsten slug was meant to wreck tanks, and treated the gunship's meager armor with contempt. The flyer exploded in midair.

"Apologies, ma'am, we did as fast as we could," the Phantom reported with worry.

"I don't know who you are, but you've just earned our grudging respect," Shepard said through her teeth. She was crouched by Shilu'Vael's side. The Quarian was a bloody mess.

"We need to get her to the ship ASAP," Mercy said, anger in her words.

Rix crouched next to them. "There is only one thing we can do for her here." He gestured at his own medical officer, who ran inside the base and came back with a hovering cylinder. A stasis pod.

"This should keep her stable for a few days," the medic informed.

"Better than we can do ourselves…"

"Lumiscant, we've taken casualties from a Mantis here." Shepard did not need to add what would happen if the other two gunships engaged them.

"The ship is on reentry vector right now, ma'am. ETA 9 minutes."

 _We don't have 9 minutes._ "Too long."

"I'll get you time, ma'am," Layali's voice cut in. "I'm airborne and loaded for bear. Give me targets."

"God bless you, Amari," Shepard exclaimed with audible relief. "Get your ass over here. Tracer and Reaper, keep that infantry busy."

"Roger."

"Aye, luv."

"Alright."

The jumpjet trooper's arrival was crucial in timing, for the other two gunships were now closing in. One of them noticed Shimada and Tomoe maneuvering the gun that had disposed of the Mantis they had just destroyed, while the other appeared poised to continue pounding at Shepard's position.

At once Amari went after the second one. The gunship crew saw her coming and opened up on her while moving to evade, but this was a problem Layali had exercised hundreds of times — and one she had dealt with in practice no few times either. She weaved and dodged to avoid the autocannon firing at her, and climbed until she was too high for the gun to track her; the gunship pilot, aware of the hazard of being exposed to fire from above, tried to disengage, but the Mantis, however agile and powerful, could not compete with Layali's suit in terms of agility. It was, though, too well protected for her to bring down with her railgun, but not so that she could not cripple it: four rounds and the control thrusters were blown to pieces. The gunship swerved at the sudden loss of balance and the crew tried to regain control, but without success. The craft hit the ground like a rock.

Whoever was in charge of the raid saw that and noticed which way the wind was blowing, for the last gunship at once withdrew from its attack position and moved to shield the raiders as they pulled back.

"They're retreating," Lacroix reported.

"We've got them on the run," Garrus say in relief. "Good work."

"Not without cost," Shepard mused.

Rix turned to face her. "Remind me never to pick a fight with you."

"They're the best we got," Aaliyah replied with a small measure of pride.

"Now, we should investigate what was it that everyone was after. And how did they know of this place."

The Starwatch commander keyed her mike. "People, get me some prisoners."

"Acknowledged," came Reyes' reply, and with that he unwittingly brought to the fore another question — what to do with Miranda's group.

"ETA for the corvette?"

"6 minutes, ma'am," came Brulirea's reply.

Lawson looked on with guarded expectation, knowing that the time for bargaining had come, and that extricating themselves from their unappealing position would be a thorny affair.

* * *

 _Author's note:_ many thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kishinokurobi** for proofreading, ideas and occasionally playing Devil's Advocate.

Maxim #47 of **Schlock Mercenary** 's _Seventy_ _Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries_ was quoted verbatim in this chapter.

Apologies but my French is _very_ elementary. If I screwed up somewhere, feel free to bludgeon me over it.


	21. Citadel: Extraction

Cronos Station

It was a brief sentence, just two words. They reached Sombra before showing up in one of her screens:

 _Well done._

* * *

"You knew I was going to leak that."

"In all honesty? No, I didn't." The man with the strange eyes put the cigar to his lips, then exhaled a puff of smoke. "I'm glad that gamble paid off."

Sombra glared at him. _Mal hecho, señor. Why didn't you bring me into the plot… Oh._ "You wanted to have your hands clean, _¿verdad?_ "

A nod. "You know I have sponsors. They were demanding a reprisal, even though I told them it was not the best of ideas."

"So you let me know." The dark-skinned girl crossed her arms. " _¿Y valió la pena?_ You paid a high price for it."

"The results will eventually percolate through Alliance command, so they will learn about it from their own sources. Regarding the agents, we can get them released if necessary."

Sombra tilted her head slightly sideways with a frown. "But having inside people on the Compact can't hurt." Her glare became piercing. "You're playing with fire. _Lo sabes, ¿verdad?_ One tiny screw-up and the first attempt at working together goes down in flames."

The man was unfazed. "Who are you talking about?" he asked rhetorically. "The Compact? Or us?"

* * *

Knossos system - Artemis Tau cluster

"You're not being cooperative."

"I don't understand. I've answered your every question."

"Do you really expect me to believe that you naturally came to be a biotic?"

This scene had already played out before. Shepard knew what Miranda was going to say, down to the letter.

"That we are in your ship," the brunette woman began, "is in part our own decision. You've noted yourself it was more convenient for us to be interrogated back at Erinyes station. We really are on your side, colonel. There is information I'm in no position to divulge. If you lean on us too hard, it is of little difficulty for my employer to arrange our extraction."

They stared at each other for some good fifteen seconds, but Miranda was unyielding. She did not even bother playing the blinking game, merely returning Shepard's glare with empty eyes.

Aaliyah left the cell in frustration. The woman watched her go.

Garrus eyed her. "Still nothing new?"

"It's like trying to squeeze water from a rock."

Since the incident at Iera, they had questioned Miranda's squad again and again and again. The responses had always been the same: they were hired operatives working for Hades Security.

"That woman really grinds my gears," Shepard fumed. "She knows Erinyes station by name! Her employer can easily break her out? Just who the hell does she work for? What have we got on Hades Security?"

"It's legit and real," Martinsson answered neutrally. "They work the border worlds and the Traverse. They're military contractors — they play cops on some frontier settlements, guard mining developments, escort convoys, and occasionally chase bounties. Other than that, they're a complete nonentity. They pay their taxes, inspections never turn up anything, and there hasn't been a single episode on the media involving them."

"Well, this one would be a first… if it ever became public," Aaliyah growled. "Where's their HQ? I think it's a dead end, but paying them a visit wouldn't hurt."

"They're based on Benning. They don't have much of a reputation there, though — they simply don't cause any stirs."

A shrug. They still had slightly over an hour before they reached Therum. An Alliance patrol was already in place to watch for unknown ships attempting to make planetfall, but no activity had been yet reported.

"So much for making progress on something on the way," Aaliyah said morosely. The other agents had been similarly tight-lipped.

She moved on to the next cells. On one, Anika was interrogating the blue-skinned Widowmaker. On the other, Reaper had removed his great overcoat and mask, and was vigorously exercising.

' _We are on your side,' that bitch said. Hard to see HIM on my side._

Garrus noted Shepard's hesitation. "You're evading this man."

She bristled at the comment, but held herself back and breathed deeply before replying. "I… don't know. He murdered my entire squad all those years ago… but every time we've crossed paths ever since he's turned things around in our favor."

The Turian snorted. "Can't argue with that." The callous remark still echoed in his head: _I could have killed you in those mines. You're still breathing._ Not only that, but this Reaper had also saved his life down on those shafts in Pokhara.

Aaliyah turned to Astrid. "Tell me I'm not nuts."

Martinsson was uneasy. "Almost everyone would say you're actually excusing the worst terrorist and murderer of the century. But then again… almost no one knows all the facts."

Shepard snorted. "That helps a lot."

"Colonel, another ship is inbound and heading towards Therum," the Mercy AI informed urgently.

"We'll take it." Once again Aaliyah blessed being back on a ship of Alliance make, even if it was just an upgunned civilian corvette. They had obtained it from another private security contractor and mildly tuned it; as no one had suggested anything, Astrid had jokingly proposed to name it _Girls' Night Out_ , as an oblique reference to her predominantly feminine crew —and, with such a name, who was going to guess it was in use by a black ops group?—, and it had stuck.

They entered the bridge to find the target ship depicted on the hologram projector that dominated the CIC.

"Identification positive. She's the SSV _Miramar,_ a Javelis class destroyer." Then, after a second, Mercy added: "They're hailing us."

"On screen." Both Garrus and Shepard harbored the same ugly thought: _the last thing we need is the Citadel somehow co-opting an Alliance vessel._

 _Unless,_ Aaliyah thought on her own, _these are the goons coming to break the bitch out._

The projector shifted to display the visage of a man in uniform. "This is commander Rodimtsev aboard the SSV _Miramar._ Identify yourselves and state your intended course."

Astrid looked at Shepard, who nodded. "This is first officer Steinsvaag aboard the _Girls' Night Out._ I am operating this vessel on behalf of the Fortaleza corporation. We intend to land on Therum."

The officer's face did not change. "What's your intended business on Therum? Fortaleza crews are rarely seen on these parts."

"We've been hired by Hahne-Kedar to escort a shipment of refined metals to Mars. You can contact them at their Nova Yekaterinburg office for confirmation."

They saw Rodimtsev turn around and hear the report from his crew. At length, he nodded. "Your contract seems to be in order. You will have to wait for your client for six standard hours. Currently Therum is under lockdown."

Shepard's mouth twitched. _Fuck._

Martinsson continued: " _Miramar,_ we need to resupply. We did not account for a six-hour delay to land. As there are no neighboring support facilities, we request permission to land under guard."

"Permission is refused. We are under orders to hold every ship from landing until the lockdown is lifted by authorities planetside. State the nature of your needs."

Shepard keyed her mike. "Commander Rodimtsev, this is colonel Aaliyah Shepard from Starwatch, serial number two-eight-one-zero-nine-five-three-five, authentication code MORNINGSTAR. I am countermanding all of your orders. Stand down and allow our mission to proceed unimpeded."

The man's expression turned dour, but he acquiesced — much to Shepard's relief: "Acknowledged, colonel. Be advised, the starport at Nova Yekaterinburg is not allowing any craft to depart or land. Reasons unknown."

"The warning is appreciated," Aaliyah thanked him. "We have a team down on the surface who can find out more about it. Join SSV _Bayern_ on the other side of the planet and stand ready to provide support. We'll keep you posted."

"Understood."

She keyed Mercy next: "Raise Dr. T'Soni's security detail on Therum. Inform them that it's highly likely that there are hostile elements going their way."

"Yes, Shepard."

Anika entered the bridge. "What did I miss?"

"Benezia's agents are already raising hell planetside," was the gruff response. _Well, we kind of saw it coming, didn't we? Nobody was going to sit on their thumbs while we crossed half the galaxy to save Rix and his crew…_ "I take it that you didn't find out anything new."

"No new intel, regrettably," she admitted. "I took my time to check her vitals again. Talon… she's been so thoroughly butchered that a totally different baseline is necessary to determine whether she's healthy. She was very cooperative, I must say."

Shepard had a moment to think of Tracer and Genji: "I was expecting someone to pay her a visit."

"So was I. Considering their history, I expected Lena to at least stop by."

Garrus was lost, but not Valena. The Turian noticed this, considered whether it was Citadel business to know that, and at length he asked: "Something from their past?"

Anika bowed her head. "Lena failed to stop Widowmaker from assassinating a prominent omnic leader. That was one of the events that sparked the Second Omnic Crisis and heralded the rise of synthetic extremists."

"After the first crisis, omnics were rather well behaved, some fanatics notwithstanding," Genji said as he walked in, Layali slightly behind him. "It was us who pushed them to rebel a second time."

"If you count Talon as part of us, that is," Shepard muttered. "Reaper surely knows the whole shebang, but if he does he's not telling."

Amari said darkly, "I still think his place is on the other side of the airlock."

"As do I, even if it wouldn't put him down," Shepard agreed uneasily, and continued, looking at Garrus and Valena as she did, "but however _much_ it grates me, if there's something we should know is that compromises are necessary."

The Mercy AI informed: "Dr. T'Soni demands to speak with you, colonel."

"Put her on screen."

The projector shifted to show the visage of an Asari. It was immediately evident, as Valena had once commented, that Liara T'Soni was very young.

"Colonel Shepard, is it?" She said tentatively, her voice slightly brittle. "What is the problem? All my permits and safe conducts were in order according to ambassadors Goyle and Myrashi. I'm doing some delicate work here, and a disruption will set me back greatly."

Valena replied instead. "Dr. T'Soni, this is Valena Danaan, adjutant for Spectre Tela Vasir. We have reason to believe you may be the target of a forced extraction."

Liara went from surprise to puzzlement to alarm in the span of seconds. "F-forced extraction? Who-who would try to do that?"

"Your mother," was the simple reply. "It's highly likely she was indirectly involved on the assault on Elysium."

"But that can't be," she exclaimed. "And in any case, I'm distanced from my mother, we haven't talked for years now, what could she possibly want with me?"

"So far, we don't know," Shepard admitted in reply. "But we have it from good sources that she's moving to have you removed from Alliance space. For your personal safety and operational concerns we're now on our way to extract you."

Visibly rattled, T'Soni nodded. "A-alright… how long do I have? I want to bring some materials with me."

"We'll land next to your dig site in an hour's time. We have alerted your guards, but it would be best if you stayed out of sight."

Aaliyah had a moment to find odd the way asari paled. "...Yes. I'll be waiting."

The transmission ended. Shepard thought out loud, "Let's just hope this whole episode doesn't mean she ends up thinking she's about to be taken hostage."

"I wouldn't bet against that," Garrus said deadpan.

"Amari and Park, suit up. We're dropping you ahead of us the moment it's possible."

* * *

Therum

"LZ in sight," Mercy reported automatically.

"Amari? Park? Anything?"

"Nothing, ma'am," Park replied laconically.

Layali added roughly, "They'd be nuts to fly Kodiaks in this shit sandwich of a storm."

"Sandstorm or not, they have to arrive somehow. Perhaps some kind of land vehicle," Garrus hazarded.

Tracer voiced Shepard's suspicions: "Unless they are here already."

Layali's figure of speech was spot on. The gale howled and raged, sand flying in a swarm of stingers that became an abrasive whip upon a strong gust. And, to make a miserable weather even worse, it was night time on that part of the world, with no moon to at least turn the pitch black darkness into a twilight gloom. Only her shields allowed Amari to fly in such awful conditions.

"I've made contact with the guard force," the hardsuit pilot reported mechanically. "They're waiting for us."

"Copy that," Aaliyah acknowledged him. "The sooner we're out of this place the better."

Some lights turned on, illuminating the small valley that was their LZ and giving Tracer a reference point she could use. On such horrible weather, landing a vessel this big would be taxing, but she had the AI to assist her. And a good thing it was — the wind averaged forty knots, peaking at sixty at worst, and it never blew constantly from the same direction, shifting a few degrees every other second. While manual compensation was not impossible, it was somewhere to the left of it.

"Bloody hell, I'll be damned if it doesn't look cozy down there," Lena grumped.

"Then damned you are," Valena replied blankly. She had performed insertions on such weather before, but she had never liked it.

Wrex grunted. "Nice weather. Reminds me of home. Good time to dig in with some chow."

"Everyone hold on tight, it's getting rocky," Tracer warned, her attention focused on the altitude reading directly fed to her retinas. Three hundred meters… two hundred and fifty… two hundred…

The _Girls' Night Out_ was a corvette, which meant she was some good eighty meters long, with a wingspan of roughly thirty-five. Not a sleek, sexy military design, but a civilian ship instead, she was not streamlined for atmospheric flight, which actually gave her a small edge on such kind of weather — but not that much of an edge. The gale made it almost impossible to gradually reduce her approach speed, and after roughly a minute of struggling while hovering at one hundred meters, Tracer straight-out dropped her like a rock instead — to light up all thrusters with scarcely ten meters to go.

Still she landed heavily. The whole craft jolted brusquely just before touching down.

"Apologies, crew," she said over the intercom. "We caught a gust of wind right at the last moment."

"'Apologies'? I would call it a perfect landing on such conditions, ma'am," Lumiscant retorted as she assessed the condition of the ship. "The only thing we'll need to take care of is the paint job."

Down on the cargo bay, Shepard punched the emergency release to deploy the loading ramp: "I want a choke point set by the gorge and a perimeter a hundred meters around the ship! Move!"

A quartet of troopers ran towards the ship. Aaliyah and Astrid moved to meet them as the rest of her crew raced to deploy around:

"Lieutenant Spilbergen reporting as ordered, ma'am!"

"Colonel Aaliyah Shepard. Where's the VIP?" She noticed this young officer did not even bother with a glance at Garrus and Valena.

"In the mines, ma'am, still preparing items for transportation."

The Starwatch colonel swallowed the curse on the tip of her tongue. _Scientists…_ "There's no more time. How many men do you have here?"

"A full platoon, ma'am."

"You're no longer on escort duty. I want this installation guarded tighter than a vault, and don't consider yourself relieved until I say so personally. Is that understood?"

"Loud and clear, ma'am. We do have everything locked up nice and tight already."

"Vehicles approaching from the west through the canyons!" the airborne Layali alerted. "Bearing two-six-eight, estimate distance fourteen kilometers, say again one-four klicks, and closing in fast."

"You have your orders, lieutenant," Shepard barked. "Defend this place at all costs, you hear me?"

Spilbergen saluted. "Count on it, ma'am."

"Good. Garrus! You're in charge of the perimeter." She turned around and pointed at Astrid, Valena, Genji and Tracer. "You four, come with me. Let's go fetch the VIP before it gets hot here."

The archaeological dig itself was underground, and to reach it they had to traverse a series of tunnels and galleries excavated in the rock. They raced through the small maze, harried by the quickly approaching unknowns, until at last they met their objective as she arrived on a cargo elevator from further underground:

"Oh! You startled me," she said with some mild embarrassment.

"Dr. T'Soni, I gather? I'm Colonel Shepard, Starwatch. Are you ready to go?"

"If we can carry some items with us, then yes…"

"What items?"

Liara pointed at the crates around her. Shepard had to fight the urge to roll her eyes: _Scientists!_

"Doctor, there's unknown people already coming our way. My ship's landed right next to these mines and is a sitting duck: one antitank round and it's toast. Choose what's absolutely critical and your detail will take the rest. They aren't after that, they're after you."

"But-but colonel—this is a disassembled Prothean data repository," Liara protested shakily. "I can't single out any critical component, either I take it whole or I don't."

Shepard cursed her luck. If it was Prothean, what if it had any clues to the stuff they actually wanted her to help with? "Okay, it can't be helped." She keyed her mike: "Lumiscant, send some worker frames to my position. There's some mission critical cargo that needs to be loaded aboard."

"Yes ma'am."

"Garrus, we have run into a snag here. Prepare to repel hostiles."

A very humanlike sigh came through the radio circuit: "Things could go without a hitch for once."

Aaliyah snorted. "You tell me. I'm sending Oxton and Shimada your way. Astrid, Valena and I will escort the VIP."

"Roger."

Tracer and Genji nodded and hurried away. Shepard hated being stuck down there when her crew and her ship could soon be attacked and was fidgety and uneasy, despite knowing that this Dr. T'Soni could help their investigation further along.

Liara noticed it and stammered: "I'm—I'm sorry, colonel. I didn't want to inconvenience you."

"It's not inconveniencing, it's—" In spite of herself, again Shepard found herself disarmed by an Asari, only it was by T'Soni's utter awkwardness this time. She felt Astrid's amused look and fought the irritation rising within her. "Doctor, you probably did right by insisting. The exact details we'll tell you when we're aboard my ship. I'm just concerned about our safety, that's all."

Liara nodded hesitatingly, then addressed Valena: "If I don't intrude—how is it that you ended up working with—?"

The Asari commando interrupted her holding up an open hand. "Were I to tell you that what you're asking is extremely sensitive in nature, what would you think?"

T'Soni dwelt on that for a few moments, eyeing Danaan's armor and weapons, thinking. "You're a huntress, aren't you? From Lessus, maybe?"

A nod. "I can't help but wonder what gave me away."

"Oh—er… You see, your posture… My mother had a Justicar acquaintance who established a shrine there. She was a specialist of this fighting style… I don't recall the name, it melds pressure points with improvised weapons. Very dirty fighting."

Valena smiled. "That sounds like mistress Citila alright. Not my mentor, but I spent some time on her shrine."

Liara shook her head. "Two of the most dreadful years ever."

"Yet you still remember enough to recognise the basic postures."

Shepard had to search for a while on the memories she had borrowed from Valena to find fleeting images of a dawn on a green sky and Asari acolytes already up and training, in a style stridently ringing of… eskrima and ninjutsu. She was not surprised, though. She had studied enough martial arts to know that, upon attaining a certain degree of mastery, from an apparently relaxed posture a practitioner could unleash all manner of attacks and parries.

"A-anyway, I thought no one undergoing Justicar training would become a gun for hire."

"That's correct," the commando allowed. "You should be able to deduce the rest yourself, doctor. I commend you for your keen eye."

That only flustered Liara even more. "It's-it's what I do. I find patterns." She turned to Shepard and Martinsson: "You say you need my help?"

The Starwatch colonel nodded, seeing the first worker frame turn around the corner down the passageway just as she was wondering what was it that kept them. "Your expertise may help us decipher something that's got us stumped, but that will have to wait. Let's get this stuff aboard so we can leave this place. Astrid, you're on point."

"Roger."

"Garrus, report."

"Your jumpjet trooper has confirmed four incoming Grizzly hover tanks, heading constant," came the reply. "Only one with visible weapons, a turret-mounted gun. I have tasked Park and Amari to flank and engage when they approach our line. Got the two Bulwarks positioned for long-range fire. They should appear on the gorge in minutes," he reported. "We're ready here."

At first glance, it did not look like it was something they could not handle. Still she was uneasy. "Stay on your toes," she instructed. "Alert the _Bayern_ and the _Miramar._ If they knew of Dr. T'Soni they also know she's under guard."

"Thought as much," Garrus agreed. "I suggest you allow the Iera squad to stand by in reserve."

Her first impulse was to say no. She had her misgivings about Reaper and Widowmaker, but it was the biotic woman that she absolutely distrusted. But he made a fair point — if the enemy overwhelmed them it would be wise to have a backup. "Granted," she said reluctantly. "Only as a last resort. I don't like them."

The trip back to the surface was agonizingly slow, with Aaliyah expecting to hear at any time that the unknown enemy was on them, and so making it to the surface with no contact reported only made her even more uneasy…

"Contact, contact! Krogan infantry advancing through the gorge!"

On his position next to the loading ramp, Wrex spun around: "What?"

"Amari, Park, engage at will, engage at will!" Garrus repeated.

Krogan warriors had a fearsome reputation that proved yet again well deserved: there were roughly thirty of them, all outfitted in dull red and black armour, and they poured through the crevasse and up the slope like a tidal wave; they were met with a withering hail of fire, but Krogan could absorb a ridiculous amount of punishment before even falling to their knees and crawling on, with only direct cannon fire from the Bulwark tanks felling them outright.

Not one to be surprised, Tracer had, within seconds, retreated into the ship's armoury to fetch a heavy duty plasma shotgun, but even that was lacking punch enough to actually score a kill in one shot, so instead she focused on trying to disable them by shooting at their joints and feet. Genji followed suit, and in doing so they forced the raiders to close their ranks, reducing their available cover, but not stopping their advance:

"You can't bottle them up for long!" Wrex warned. "You need more firepower to hold them back, when they get close enough they'll just charge you!"

"Brulirea! Send an SOS to the _Bayern_ and the _Miramar!_ " Shepard ordered. "Doctor T'Soni, get on board! Astrid, on me!"

It was clear that they would not beat off this attack, so the only solution was to get the hell out of Dodge, but to do that they had to cover their retreat. That was what Shepard and Martinsson did: upon deploying their barriers a signal was sent, and both the Starwatch troopers and the Alliance soldiers guarding the dig site started a staggered withdrawal; Mercy had her Bulwark mechs shift to sentry mode and pour a near solid stream of fire down the gorge, with the hardsuit-riding Park assisting. Their single Krogan, on the other hand, charged the enemy with a rousing battle cry, alternately tossing biotic attacks and firing explosive rounds off his shotgun.

Still, Wrex turned out to be right. The attackers smelled blood as the soldiers retreated, and they threw caution to the wind to launch themselves into a human wave attack. Gatling fire scythed through them, but still they kept on coming.

Then multiple biotic singularities materialized, followed by a cascade of shockwaves, and the battlefield filled with detonations. Shepard spun around to see Liara, Valena and the woman they had captured at Iera standing next to the loading ramp, arms outstretched, with Lacroix crouched to their left, aiming her long rifle, and Reyes standing before them arms at the ready.

"That gave them pause," Garrus noted. "This is it!"

"Everyone aboard! Now!"

"Pin them down again!" Park asked. Valena complied, with their VIP and Miranda also repeating the attack. Softened by the previous onslaught, the raiders were less able to evade the pull of the singularities, giving both the hardsuit pilot and the airborne Amari perfect targets — for the former to trigger a core overload, eject and send his mech straight into the clustered foes, and for Layali to expend her entire load of explosive ordnance in a devastating barrage.

The Bulwarks were the least to board the ship, still firing their Gatling guns nonstop as they did:

"Tracer, get us out of here!"

* * *

Therum orbit

"Layali, Park, your timing was impeccable," Shepard congratulated her troopers.

The former thanked her with a laconic bow of her head. Park was more emotional, however. "If I may be allowed to speak freely, ma'am—I'm damned glad we acted when we did."

Spilbergen was having a serious case of the shakes. "If we'd been alone down there they'd have wiped us out," he said grimly. "You people… you were a godsend."

Aaliyah produced a bottle of liquor and a few shot glasses from a cupboard. "We're not on a Navy ship. Drink up."

The Alliance marine smiled. "Let me say it again. A godsend." He raised his glass at the Starwatch crew. "To you guys."

The mess hall was crowded with people, and so was the medbay. Of the Compact crew, Genji and Wrex had been the only ones to sustain anything other than flesh wounds, but it had not been something they could not pull through. The Alliance soldiers guarding the dig, being less heavily armed and with no support of their own, had had a rougher time.

Miranda, Lacroix and Reyes stood apart from the others. It was increasingly hard for Shepard to reconcile her own antipathies with the fact that the ex-Talons had once again assisted them when they had no obligation to do it, being objectively their enemy.

Reaper noticed her glance and returned it neutrally. The Starwatch commander interrogated him silently: _What's your angle? I'm not forgetting what you did. Are you trying to make amends?_ _Should I buy it?_

"Now that we're safe… ish," Spilbergen corrected himself, "what's going on here? I never saw Citadel goons on our side."

Aware of her commander's silent exchange with Reyes, Astrid took charge of that with a shrug. "What makes you think we're cleared to tell you?"

A nod. "So it's official."

Martinsson gave him a warning look. "Nobody's going to shoot you for asking — but I hope you're looking for a permanent assignment on a Traverse outpost. Or pigeonholed as a glorified babysitter for one egghead after another." _You should have known better than to open your mouth._

The marine and his underlings gathered there got the hint. _You're right._ "Asking what?" Spilbergen said rhetorically.

"If I may, miss, I do have one question," another trooper asked respectfully. "What the hell were those Krogan mercs doing on Alliance space?"

Shepard stood up. "That's something to figure out," she answered. "But there's something else to take care of first. Now that we've caught our breath a little, I should check on our VIP. Excuse me."

They had allotted Dr. T'Soni her own cabin, now filled to the brim with the crates containing the pieces of the Prothean relic she had refused to leave behind — and which she had also refused to stow on the cargo bay. _Scientists,_ Aaliyah thought for a third time. A brief wait, and the door opened.

Liara was lying on the bunk bed, her face drained from exhaustion and stress. She opened her eyes and sat painstakingly when Shepard walked in.

"Colonel," she said softly, "are you coming to check up on me?"

A nod. "I had expected Danaan to be here."

Slowly Liara shook her head. "Valena… excused herself. She left me in the capable hands of Dr. Ziegler." Again she lay back on the bed. She was tired. "Please forgive me… I'm not used to situations like this."

Shepard considered briefly whether it was fortunate or not for her to be acquainted to such events. "You're better off that way." Then she added: "Valena has her reasons."

"I know," was the weak reply. "Miss Danaan is not famous, but I know quite a lot about her. She… helped broker a ceasefire between the Alliance and the Citadel during the First Contact War. After that she took vows of celibacy and exile from her own people."

Aaliyah sat over a crate — carefully. "Again, she has her reasons," she repeated. "She told me once that she has to bear the burden of concealing secrets from her kind."

This surprised Liara: "A Justicar would confide you that?"

This surprised Shepard in turn: "I didn't know she was a Justicar."

"Oh—er, one in training, I mean," she stammered. "How do you know of them? They are rather secretive."

She meditated her response carefully: "Let's just say… the burden she carries is one I'm familiar with." _After a fashion._

Liara understood at once—and blushed. It was endearing. "Oh! Sorry for, er, intruding."

Shepard smiled and shook her head. "You didn't intrude."

"So you have already…"

"Yes, I had to meld with Valena."

The young Asari knotted her brow. " _Had_ to?"

Aaliyah held back a sigh. _Here we go…_ "What do you know of the Elysium incident?"

"I heard it was attacked… the Alliance lodged a protest and threatened with direct reprisals, unless those responsible were punished and a Spectre was brought in for questioning… Am I right?"

Shepard blinked. "You're remarkably well informed."

"Well… I don't have access to any classified data sources. I just like to stay current."

"You do a better job than most." She straightened up. "But if you also knew what the attackers were after…"

Liara shook her head tiredly. "Sorry. It was not divulged."

 _So… whoever knows of the Compact hasn't spread the knowledge around yet._ "I can tell you that. The apparent objective of the raiders was to seize a Prothean relic kept under guard on the military base my organization maintained there."

The Asari scientist sat up: "You had a… Prothean artifact there? A _working_ one?"

"Yes," she admitted. "It was unearthed in a newly founded colony and moved there for safe keeping and study, but we weren't able to make much progress."

T'Soni stared at her with a dreamy expression, then: "You said 'weren't.'"

Aaliyah chose her words with great care: "It was partially destroyed during the attack."

That puzzled Liara. "So something useful did survive?"

The Starwatch officer tapped her temple twice. "Some of it is here."

The Asari was astonished: "You interfaced with a Prothean artifact? That's amazing! What did you see?"

"That's what we need your help with," was the flat answer.

She eyed her oddly, then the pieces fit and she saw the picture: "Oh… So that's why you tried melding with Valena. But you needed someone acquainted with Prothean technology. And I was the only one available, I gather."

A reluctant nod. "First we tried to recruit professor Nefara Cirron. We believed that if a Spectre approached her there would be no objections. We were wrong… the matriarchs sponsoring her through the Asari government foiled all our attempts to get in touch with her."

"She's about the best there is." Liara dwelt on that for a few seconds before adding: "I gather your initiative is known to very few people."

Shepard forced herself to answer after remembering that, if things with this Asari went the same way they had gone with Valena, soon she would be pry to everything. "I wouldn't go as far as saying that it's about as black as it gets, but it depends on about half a dozen Spectres, some high ranking officers from both the Systems Alliance and the Turian navies, and Starwatch, my own agency. It doesn't even have a formal name, it's just called the Compact."

Liara kept her eyes on her. "So I'm being asked to collaborate with a clandestine effort."

There were a dozen different good arguments she could pitch at her, but this young Asari was informed enough and perceptive enough that she would see through her.

But shameless candor could not be misconstrued. "Yes," she said simply.

The blue eyes bored into her for a few instants still.

Then she looked sideways . "You say those Krogan were sent to extract me."

An uneasy nod. "That intel was supplied to us by the Spectres. The exact source, I don't know."

"My mother could have simply sent for me—no… The Alliance could have held me as a bargaining chip. But send Krogan?" She was lost in thought for a while. "How she could have been involved on the Elysium incident… she may be anti-Alliance, but I know she would not resort to anything so brutal."

Shepard was very alert now. "We believe associating with Saren Arterius was the kicker for her hawkish stand."

Liara seemed about to say something, then changed her mind. Then she changed her mind again. "What happened on your colony… it was horrible. Part of me still refuses to believe that my mother took part on that." A sigh. "A rather small part." Then she looked up. "But I won't accept that it's something she would do voluntarily. If she did, it was because she was pushed into doing it, and she… needs my help."

The Starwatch officer held her gaze. "And, by that, you mean 'our' help."

That made T'Soni instantly uneasy, but she echoed Shepard's earlier candor. "Yes."

After some long instants, Shepard bowed her head in agreement. "I can't promise anything, but if it turns out that she was somehow coerced into working with Saren on the Elysium attack, we'll see to it that she's exonerated."

The Asari deflated with relief. "Thank you. Then yes. I'll help you."

Aaliyah bowed her head. Here we go again. "So… we should get started."

Liara stared quizzically. It took her a moment to understand. Instantly she blushed.

"… Alright."

Shepard noticed Liara's hands were slightly shaking as she propped herself up.

"Hey. Relax. I'm not going to hurt you."

"N-no, of course not… sorry."

The first time Aaliyah had melded, Valena had stared deep into her eyes while holding her hands. Danaan's serenity and assurance had eventually broken through her initial reluctance and mistrust, and had eased her through the experience.

It was plain obvious that Liara was nowhere near like that, as her own hands trembled and sweated as they reached out to hold hers.

"Look… look at me," she asked softly. Liara was struggling very hard to keep her nerves in check. For a second Shepard believed she would not be able to get a hold of herself, but eventually she succeeded and her eyes changed to a solid, deep and unnerving black:

"Embrace eternity."

* * *

Aaliyah took a deep breath, eyes closed, then opened them as she exhaled… and stared at Liara with big, alarmed eyes:

"Why didn't you tell me you had never done this before?"

Liara was in shock. She stared sightlessly ahead for a few seconds, slightly panting. Then she managed to jaunt back into reality and returned her look.

"You would have refused. I… I wanted to see. What you saw."

Shepard found herself at a loss for words. She was possessed in equal parts of wonder, surprise and the horrible sensation of having defiled an event that only happened once per lifetime.

Unexpectedly her eyes became wet. "Yes," she stammered. "I'd have refused."

Liara smiled shyly. "Don't feel guilty. You did not cause me any discomfort."

The Starwatch officer struggled to regain her composure. The Asari held her hand, and Shepard noticed it was much steadier now. That did the trick. She bowed her head.

"Thank you." Again a deep breath. "For us…"

"Yes, I know it now. It's a life-changing experience for us too."

The roles had somehow been reversed, with Aaliyah feeling fragile and weak and Liara trying to comfort her. Eventually Shepard realized that and smirked. "Heh… I never expected it to turn out like this."

"Neither did I." Liara exhaled deeply. "I expected something… and got an entirely different result instead."

They had a big enough reason to feel disappointed: their joining had not yielded the results Shepard had hoped for.

What they had found, on the other hand, was profoundly disturbing.

"I agree." She exhaled in turn. "We should go and tell the others what we've found out."

Shakily Liara tried to stand up, but once she stood straight her weakness vanished. "Yes."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ credits go to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for their proofreading, criticism and input. My thanks!


	22. Citadel: Shockwaves

_**Author's notice:**_ this once I had to do something I'm really uncomfortable with: I had to go and change how the previous chapter ended. If it's been some time since you last read it, go back and check it out right now. It was either this, or reposting, which was worse. Sorry.

As usual: many thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for their help.

* * *

 _Girls' Night Out_

The whole Compact crew was gathered in the war room: Amari, Martinsson, Oxton, Park, Shepard, Shimada, Ziegler, Brulirea, Lumiscant, Danaan, Vakarian and Wrex. The Mercy AI was also standing by, as was Liara.

The hologram projector shifted to display David Anderson's face. "Shepard. Good to see you. I understand you have news of importance."

Aaliyah had had to spend several minutes composing herself after the melding, as she struggled to box away the questions blazing on her mind. She hoped she could, if not answer them, at least escalate some of those. "Yes, skipper. The mission was a success. We had to fend off a group of Krogan mercenaries, but we have successfully recruited Dr. Liara T'Soni. She helped me to decipher part of the information encrypted on the Prothean beacon destroyed on Elysium. Also… there's the matter of our prisoners to discuss."

Anderson frowned. "I also have news regarding your prisoners. I have been instructed to pass on new orders to you. They are your responsibility and yours to make use of as you see fit."

Shepard was dumbstruck. She refrained from asking if he knew what that meant because of course he did, and asked instead, "Whose orders are those, skipper?"

"They came to me through Vice Admiral Steven Hackett."

A scowl. "This is very fishy, skipper."

"Tell me about it, X. He did not like it either."

"I trust he also didn't know anything about our intelligence leak," she added darkly, then she snapped at him, "David, this is a load of crap. Someone knows enough about us to feed us intel outside of normal channels. There's nothing to stop us from walking deaf, dumb and blind into a trap if that someone decides to feed us disinformation instead. And now, just because, I have to become custodian to people who know about Erinyes but won't reveal how or why." _Then there's the small kink about two of them being some of the most destructive terrorists seen in ages, but whatever._ "Have you been able to find something about them at all?"

"Reyes and Lacroix, you already know. Neves, Richter and Tomoe are all former Corsairs and served on the Skyllian Verge against the Batarian External Forces. I'm forwarding you their files now. The biotic woman… I had to call in some favors to find out something. She is registered as one Miranda Lawson, but other than a birth certificate and a few high school and college diplomas there's nothing. Zero. Then, there's some Hades Security personnel files matching her description, but under the name of Samantha Sutherland. Under this name, she's had extensive experience as a security consultant." He paused briefly. "I've put out a personal request on some information brokers about her."

Shepard had no choice but to acknowledge that. "Doesn't make me trust her any better, skipper."

"I know," Anderson accepted reluctantly, "but I also know Hackett. If he's passed down those orders without challenging them then he must be privy to something about her that he can't disclose to us. It's not the kind of reassurance you need, I get that," he allowed, "but go with it."

 _In other words, your problem._ She breathed deeply. "Alright, skipper." She decided to deal with this one later and moved on. She had bigger things on her mind. "There's some more pressing concerns we have to deal with. Regarding Dr. T'Soni here, we were surprised to face off against Krogan mercenaries. Our own Krogan, here, has one theory."

Wrex took it as his cue and spoke up. "These were Blood Pack goons. Nasty fellows. They want to rule the Terminus and they don't care who gets in their way."

"Something still doesn't add up about this," Garrus thought out loud. "Blood Pack mercenaries aren't much for taking people alive. Also, where were the vorcha? They're their favorite cannon fodder."

Martinsson continued his train of thought: "Once I knew it was them, I had expected them to deploy vorcha as a distraction to close the Nova Yekaterinburg starport, but there were none of them around. Clearly they had some kind of local connection that allowed them to come here without anyone seeing them."

"The Pack has a lot invested in the underworld," Wrex manifested. "That way they stay current, get contracts and keep tabs on other strong players for the space they want."

"The local governor must be happy about that," Shepard quipped.

"Inquiries are already being pushed," Anderson informed. "Commander Rodimtsev gave chase with the _Miramar_ and cornered the Krogan on a quarry. Most of them fought to the last breath, but he managed to catch three alive. They're very badly wounded, so interrogation is out of the question for the time being."

Wrex snorted. "Now that's something worth seeing. Humans trying to sweat something out of a Krogan."

"Let's not go there, mister," Anderson warned.

Another snort. "That sort of thinking won't get you anything useful."

"We could pursue an alternate course," Danaan suggested. "The Blood Pack enjoys strong support back in the Krogan homeworld, doesn't it? Wasn't it the warlord Ganar Wrang who actually usurped the name before turning it into a mercenary legion?"

Their single Krogan trooper glanced at Valena. "You want to go there, I'm not stopping you. But Tuchanka isn't very welcoming of outsiders. Least of all of a Turian," he said, referring to Garrus.

"You said it once, Krogan have little love for the Citadel," Shepard reminded him. "We could be seen as on the lookout for allies."

"We _could_ invoke Spectre authority to have the CDEM let us through," Garrus mused, referring to the Council Demilitarization Enforcement Mission, "but I don't know if that would work. If there's one thing that would make the Council go all-out ballistic is the Krogan somehow getting their hands on AI technology, and I don't have to tell you that in their minds humans equal synthetics. Even if they did let us into Tuchanka, keeping a human visit a secret from the Council is impossible."

Wrex was silent for a few seconds. "We Krogan respect how you stood up to the Citadel back on the First Contact War," he said at last to Shepard. "If we could get you down there, I'm certain a lot of people would want to talk to you. If there was something fishy going on in Tuchanka it should not be that hard to find out."

Danaan and Vakarian exchanged looks. "We'll need a Spectre with us if we're going there," the Turian said at last.

"You can get one soon enough," Anderson informed. "They are going back to Erinyes. Some development at the Citadel, I heard. Vakarian," he addressed the Turian, "you surely would like to know there's news about your Quarian agent, Shilu'Vael."

"Did she survive the surgery?" At once Garrus was attentive.

"Yes, but… the Migrant Fleet is not going to be happy. Doctors Chakwas and Linping had to make some unorthodox decisions. They fashioned some cybernetic limbs and implants for her, just like your arm, Shepard, but to be absolutely sure that they would work on her she was also grafted with a resident AI."

"They did what?!" The Turian was shocked. "You know that's as close to blasphemy as it gets for Quarians, right?"

Anderson bowed his head gravely. "We know, but the way I hear it, it was either that or losing her, and our doctors were told to pull all the stops."

" _Primum, non nocere_ ," Anika quoted, troubled. Her implications were obvious: Shilu'Vael would be physically stable, but the psychological damage inflicted by implanting her with nothing less than _a full-fledged_ _artificial intelligence_ would be appalling.

"Yes, I've heard the words, Doctor Ziegler," the Alliance officer acknowledged her. "It can't have been easy for them to make these choices."

Shepard looked one way, then another, then shrugged. "We'll deal with this the moment we arrive at Erinyes, if none of the Spectres have dealt with it by then." She looked at Liara next. "Now, for the last item." _The really big stuff._

The Asari had kept to herself for the whole meeting, if only because the implications of the knowledge she had helped Shepard unlock terrified her. Now, she blushed and stammered, "We—I—er—reached a conclusion… the Prothean artifact destroyed on Elysium was an information relay… and it contained a message. A warning." She looked at all the faces arranged there. They were all staring expectantly, literally holding their breaths, so she continued: "The… Protheans were systematically hunted down and annihilated… by a race of ancient machines who have been culling the galaxy every 50,000 years. The Protheans warned of them calling them the Reapers."

Again she looked around her. They all were jolted by the revelation, if on different degrees. "That's impressive…," Anderson said slowly, "but I fail to notice the connection."

"It's… two-fold," T'Soni answered haltingly. "First… all the ruins I've dug up all around the galaxy are between 48,000 and 50,000 years old." Everyone was disturbed by that, but she had not yet dropped the real bomb: "And second… the message featured depictions of the Reapers themselves… and they were gigantic starships exactly matching the dreadnoughts that attacked both Elysium and Pokhara."

* * *

Aaliyah walked into the cell alone, questioning her sanity for the umpteenth time. There could be a way not to misconstrue what she was doing as something resembling a death wish, but however much she had racked her brains, she had not found it.

In the end, her gut ruled her actions, and her gut said that, out of all the people captured on Iera, _this_ one was the one she had to somehow come to terms with if she was ever going to be able to trust them enough to deploy them — something that, given the revelations of the day, she could not afford not to do.

Gabriel Reyes glared at her relentlessly.

"I'm surprised."

Shepard returned the look. "I've been given orders. I'm supposed to be your guardian and your commander now."

The former Blackwatch leader did not react visibly to that. Instead, he returned to his fitness routine and resumed doing pull-ups.

Aaliyah watched him at work with equal dispassion. The atmosphere became thick as Reyes and Shepard remained silent, as if neither one wanted to speak up first.

But Gabriel simply did not care for such games. "So you'd give me orders, guns, and expect me not to blow your head off."

She took her time to slowly frame her reply: "You had plenty of chances."

His glare was glazed dead. "I'm just biding my time."

"Don't give me that crap," she snarled. "You're smarter than that. There's an angle to this. You want something. I want to know what that is."

Another pull-up. "For starters, how about we get the credit we deserved after the First Omnic Crisis." Another pull-up, and he shot her another dead look. "Not that you can do something about it."

Shepard tilted her head slightly sideways. "And that justified hunting down and killing one Overwatch agent after another?" The personal fact was left out but they both knew it: _not to mention my crew._

"You're talking bullshit about stuff you don't know the half of."

"Make me know then."

Reyes did not stop his routine. He now went to the floor to do some crunches. "You're all bitchy about your dead crew." And unexpectedly he added: "And you're right. You only were guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Aaliyah was rocked by the admission and fought to conceal it. "So we just were in the way."

"What do you want to hear? That you were the enemy? Traitors? Collaborators?" He kept doing his crunches. "In a way, you all are. My agents died by inches to hold omnics at bay, and thirty years later I find out you're all bedmates with the damned tin cans.

"But I'll do your men a favor and say they were unwitting pawns. Then, it's like that, you just were in the way." Another few crunches while Shepard stared rock-faced. "And it was a mistake."

"It was a little more than just _a mistake,_ " Aaliyah rapped out at him, her furious anger almost overcoming her control.

"Bite me. You want to hear me say something else, your problem," he said hoarsely. "Someone else used much worse words. You can ask her."

 _By 'her,' he means… Widowmaker?_

"... Fine. I'll do that." She took a few deep breaths, then asked: "But what about the others? The Overwatch agents?"

"Those _were_ traitors, the lot of them. By omission or intent." He shifted position and started doing push-ups. "Amari, Morrison and the rest were the poster boys while my team was doing the ugly stuff nobody wanted to see. Stuff that won the war. Everyone who _knew_ and did not take a stand was an enemy."

As Reyes' team had been part of Starwatch's parent organization, it had inherited all of its records. But those were still sealed, even to high-ranking members. The only ones who ever got cleared to see them were the leaders themselves, such as Morrison and Zaryanova had been.

Grudgingly she admitted, "I don't know about what Blackwatch did, other than what was released to the media." Which was awful, but Reyes himself had said it: it was the ugly stuff that nobody wanted to see.

Gabriel snorted. "Some senior officer."

"It doesn't make you any less of a murderer. Going after people because they didn't back you up?" She snorted back.

"No, you're right." He continued his push-ups. "I'm still a murderer," he admitted.

This second admission left her wordless.

Gabriel noticed this and continued. "I've spent thirty years sealed away in a can, then another twenty roaming the galaxy. That's a _lot_ of time already before considering that all the company I got were my memories." More push-ups. "If vengeance is a cruel mistress, then memory is an even harsher judge. Make of that what you want."

Shepard caught a tiny glimpse of Reyes' pain. He had taken the mantle of Reaper out of spite — and come to regret it. But that realization was quickly swamped by sheer indignation: how could she possibly _empathize with the murderer that had massacred her squad?_

"Nothing you say can excuse what you've done."

He changed positions again and stood on his hands. "I don't talk much." _And I've kept doing stuff instead,_ the rest floated in the air.

Now he looked into her eyes, and she returned the look. Reyes' face was as blank as it had been, but for some reason it seemed to her that he appeared lighter somehow.

She turned to leave.

"Since you gave enough of a damn to come and talk, you should know something else," he said to her back. "Nobody ever cared enough to ask."

She did not turn around. "I'm not your friend."

"No." Reyes got back on his feet and reached for his great coat. "You're my commander."

Still she did not turn around.

"We're in transit for the next two standard days. Make sure you're up by 0600."

* * *

Erinyes station

"Unidentified vessel, you are approaching a restricted area. Identify yourself and shift your course or you will be fired upon."

"This is the Fortaleza corvette _Girls' Night Out._ We have clearances for docking. Submitting now."

Shepard observed the approach maneuver with tired eyes. The radio contact was entirely unnecessary, and she knew the Erinyes docking control had been tracking them for hours now, but it was impossible to tell who could be looking.

Reyes' surprising frankness had not been matched by Lacroix. Widowmaker had listened impassively to what her fellow had related, just adding that Gabriel had 'spared her the worst details' and that pushing any further would only yield pain.

Maybe the assassin was right. The whole episode had forced her to relive the horror of the encounter — and that of seeing what had been left of her crew.

Justice had to be made, but how? Her hatred called for Reyes to be sealed away in a can for another century, but that would solve nothing. And her practical self dryly noted that not making use of such an asset was beyond foolish.

If Liara and she herself had understood things right, that simply was unaffordable.

" _Girls' Night Out,_ your request to dock is granted. Please proceed to bay four."

A nod. "Mercy, I'm leaving the details to you," she said to the AI, then added deadpan, "Make sure Anika doesn't leave you behind."

"Absolutely. See you later, colonel."

Both Anderson and Nihlus were waiting on the other side of the airlock.

"Skipper." She saluted. Layali and Lena followed suit behind her.

"Shepard. Amari. Oxton." He saluted back. His face was grave.

Tracer smirked and said wryly, "What's the crisis this time?"

Nihlus answered curtly, "Come. Best if you see it for yourself." To Liara, he said: "Dr. T'Soni, welcome to Erinyes station. Let me apologize in the name of everyone here for the events of the recent days."

"It's not necessary… you didn't cause me any discomfort. Your colonel here said my help was needed, and now I know first-hand why," she answered a bit haltingly. "I'm at your disposal."

The Turian Spectre bowed his head in thanks. "It's appreciated. You have already helped us, and your expertise may come in handy again soon."

The Spectre and the Alliance officer led the Compact crew through the asteroid base. Liara was agog with amazement and surprise, her excited eyes darting everywhere and taking note of everything they saw, but at the same time she could not miss the gravity on the faces of those escorting her.

Soon they were back at the conference hall where they had first discussed Shepard's exposure to the Prothean device. Among others, Tela Vasir, Jondum Bau and Avitus Rix were there already.

Aaliyah approached the Turian. "Good to see you again, Avitus. So you have seen fit to join us here?"

Rix gave her a polite nod in greeting. "I've been doing the dirty work for too long," he said distastefully. "Call me corny, but this feels _right._ I've been trying to convince myself for years that what I was doing was in the interests of peace and stability. I don't have to do that here."

Behind Shepard, Tracer's heart swelled. It surprised her. "Back in my day, I used to say that the world could always use more heroes."

Avitus looked at the girl, recognizing her. "I had that enthusiasm too. Years beat it out of you."

Lena smiled an old, weary smile. "Bloody accurate. I s'pose we're about to be treated to another beating?"

A scowl. "You'll see."

Soon everyone was seated. "What you're about to see happened yesterday on the Citadel," Vasir said curtly.

A large screen set on the wall turned on. It displayed the Council Rotunda. On one side stood Donnel Udina as chargé d'affaires —Goyle had been recalled in protest following the attack on Elysium—, and on the other, the Councillors behind their lecterns. They did not look pleased.

"Mister Udina, we have summoned you to see what kind of excuse you can produce for your outrageous actions. It's not enough for you to flaunt your flagrant defiance to the ban on AI development agreed upon by most of the civilized races of the galaxy, you now lead a _diplomatic mission into Geth territory!_ " the Turian Councillor stormed. "Need you be reminded that the synthetics nearly annihilated a whole spacefaring race?"

Udina was impassible. "Councillor Paratus, as we are not signatories to the Citadel Accord, we are not bound by Citadel laws. Furthermore, we are not engaged in conflict in any capacity with the Geth collective. I believe I speak for the whole of the Systems Alliance when I say that I find it deplorable that, in lieu of supporting an attempt at rapprochement between organics and synthetics, you would condemn it."

"Synthetics that have clearly displayed a genocidal attitude against organics," Councillor Melara retorted. "Either you are clearly courting an avowed enemy of all life on the galaxy, or you are being played by the very AI creations you defend so steadfastly."

"If this 'avowed enemy of all life' was so intent on embarking on a genocidal crusade, they have had plenty of time to launch it, let alone to prepare it," Udina replied, still unmoved. "The diplomatic overture was proposed by the very group of citizens that resided on the world your forces invaded on the First Contact War, the Shambali—"

"And you expect us to be put at ease by that?" Councillor Talron exploded. "An 'attempt at rapprochement' led by a collective of robots claiming to be the most aggravated party in the conflict?"

"A collective of our _citizens_ that _was_ the most aggravated party, Councillor," was the dry reply. "May I remind you that Pokhara was a model colony where both humans and omnics coexisted in perfect harmony and worked shoulder to shoulder before _your_ forces invaded. It was not our actions that precipitated the war and the damages that followed. It was yours."

"Do not stray from the point! The damages and responsibilities of each party were defined on the armistice," Paratus almost snarled. "We're discussing something entirely different now."

"Indeed we are," Udina saw the chink in the armor and moved in for the kill. "We are discussing a clear and present danger. Turian troops, with identity and allegiances verified as belonging to the armed forces of the Hierarchy, lay waste to one of our colonies and massacre our citizens and personnel, and the Council refuses to take responsibility. If the diplomatic mission led by Tekhartha Zenyatta —a well-known leader who has long espoused harmony, peace and understanding between the Alliance and the Citadel, and one willing to overlook the harm done to his fellow omnics, no less— is perceived as a move to ally with a party threatening Citadel interests, it should come as no surprise. Instead, it should be read as a direct consequence of your refusal to hold yourselves accountable — of your dereliction of duty."

At that point, the image froze. "There's more, but it's pointless to dwell on it," Rix stated with finality.

All Shepard could think was: _Wow._

"While this does not affect our association," Bau began, "it is nonetheless troubling. If anyone here needs a refresher on the Morning War, I suggest you get it, right now. Regardless of whether Paratus was right or not, one fact stands: the Geth nearly exterminated a whole species, slaughtering billions. I cannot help but ponder what kind of unholy threat could emerge out of this."

There was a lot of murmuring, but no direct answer.

Then Lumiscant stood up slowly.

"Not long ago we saw a crew of Batarians killing dozens of my fellow omnics, while sparing their organic prisoners that kind of treatment," she started. Her quiet voice was trembling with barely contained anger. "It took us two wars and absurd numbers of dead on both sides to come to terms with humanity and to accept each other as equals, and all we see on part of the rest of the galaxy is a stubborn, mule-headed determination to go through the same. You hate us. You fear us.

"And we are stupid sick of it!" she suddenly raged. "Brulirea and I agree with Udina, word by word. It's not like Null Sector approached the Geth to forge a genocidal alliance, it was Tekhartha _goddamned_ Zenyatta! That guy wouldn't lift a finger to swat a fly! Why would he make an overture to the Geth, if not for peace? He has lived through our whole history and never lifted his hand in anger!" She clenched her articulated fists and hissed: "Since you're so eager to go to war with _something,_ well, Dr. T'Soni here has some wonderful news for you. There, a _real_ threat for a change, instead of fearmongering over imaginary ones. Oh, and by the way, it was just _one_ ship that blew Elysium to pieces, and the good doctor says that _whole fleets of them_ wiped out the Protheans to the last man. Happy now?"

Silence gathered for a few seconds. Both Anderson and Shepard believed the omnic had been way too hard on the Citadel people, but no voice was raised to object her words.

"I had that coming," Bau admitted at last. "The Alliance and the Citadel fundamentally disagree on the treatment of AI. Yes, we are afraid. We are terrified of a Morning War redux. If we had any Quarians here they'd flood you with stories of horror and killing."

"We're not—"

"You're not the Geth," Bau interrupted Lumiscant quietly. "We keep finding ways to ignore it and lump you with them. You could have gone their way, but you didn't."

Anika raised a hand next. "If I may… there's someone here who wants to have a word." She produced a small hologram projector from a satchel, placed it on the table, and tapped a few commands on her omni-tool.

Other than Danaan and Vakarian, the Citadel people had never met the Mercy AI, so they did not understand what was going on when the life-size figure of Angela Ziegler clad on the Valkyrie response suit appeared. They did notice, though, the way the Alliance people regarded the hologram with near-reverence.

"I'm… a facsimile of Anika's mother," the hologram introduced itself. "She made me in her image to stand watch over something so dangerous it could only be contained, not destroyed. She could have made me as a sterile AI with a series of mandates and laws to follow, but she chose instead to make me as close to what she had been in life as she could manage. You may address me by the callsign she once used, Mercy.

"My maker died in battle so she isn't here to talk to you today, but if she were, she would tell you not to be paralyzed by fear. Back then, during the Second Omnic Crisis, the governments of Earth were almost powerless before the onslaught of the rogue AIs, as they had thoroughly dismantled the one element of common, coordinated action they had to bring to bear against them, instead blaming each other and seeking to protect their own individual interests. While they bickered, the problem only grew larger.

"It took the original members of the agency they had disbanded to confront the rogue omnics and stop them. My maker was one of them. She gave her life so that others would survive, and her sacrifice helped pull the rest of the world out of their lethargy.

"I now keep Anika company, so I was among the first to hear about the Reapers and what happened to the Protheans at their hands. And here I see that you, people of the Citadel, are consumed by the same fear that kept Earth governments impotent so long ago, scared by the specters of imaginary threats and in this fashion distracted from a real menace.

"You still have the time and the chance to act. Don't squander it."


	23. Citadel: Crossroads

Erinyes station

"Look… look at this place!" Liara was astounded. The station did not have a med bay as much as it had a full fledged medical research installation, a fact that had probably saved Shilu'Vael's life. "What kind of research is taking place here?"

"We were trying to unlock biotics in humans," Anika replied. "We're exchanging expertise. We invented medi-gel and our nanomedicine is far more advanced than that of the Citadel. Your researchers are trying to port those technologies for your use. So far the biggest problem lies on chirality — Turian and Quarian physiologies are based on dextro-amino acids. Asari and Salarian biochemistries are more amenable."

Liara dwelt on that for a while, then noticed something. "You said 'were.'"

Shepard answered in Anika's stead. "This whole research has been rendered moot. Our prisoner aboard the Girls' Night Out is a skilled and potent biotic. Someone got there first."

"Oh," the Asari said simply. "And how do you think they accomplished it?"

"That is something we would love to know," doctor Karin Chakwas said in the way of welcome. "Welcome, doctor T'Soni. I don't know if your knowledge will be of use to us here, but please make yourself at home."

"Dr. Chakwas, good to see you," Shepard greeted her. "How is our Quarian guest?"

She shook her head. "Not good, colonel, not good. Apparently… she awoke just fine after the surgery… I mean, her brain scans showed similar levels of activity before and after the procedure. But she did not take it well."

Garrus shook his head, holding a hand to his face. "I knew it. Damn it… this is my fault. I could have told her to stay out of that mission…"

"Her number came up, Garrus," Aaliyah said flatly. "It could have been yours, it could have been mine. It happens. If anything, I was too rash to order us into the open, even if that was a risk we had to take."

The Turian knew she was right, but that did not lessen his misery. "I'm sorry. Not words enough." He raised his head: "Where is she?"

Shilu'Vael was interned on a secure cell, unconscious, heavy restraints binding her limbs. Shepard watched as Vakarian looked through the thick window, his pain obvious for all the world to see.

"Her current state isn't due to drugs or complications following her surgery," Chakwas informed. "She suffered a nervous breakdown and lapsed into a catatonic state. Regrettably, the restraints are necessary. She almost demolished her previous room."

The Turian barely nodded. "Has the Migrant Fleet… no," he shook his head. "They cannot be notified from here."

"We'll have to think of a good cover story," Shepard thought out loud, "or bring them into the Compact outright. But that's way above my pay grade."

Her omni-tool rang. It was Mercy, and she had sent her a text-only message:

 _Colonel, you have received a message similar to the one that alerted you to the raid on Iera. I traced it as best as I could, but I found nothing other than another bogus address._

 _You did well,_ she commended her _. We'll take it from here._

The blond Astrid Martinsson, no longer a green recruit but now a seasoned combatant and Shepard's second-in-command, knew her superior well enough to notice when her wheels started turning. "Something's afoot, lady Doomfist?"

"You could say that," she said distantly. What is this…? She turned toward Garrus: "I'm going back to the ship. Take all the time you need here."

* * *

Like the rest of her squad, Miranda was no longer a prisoner confined to a cell, though she was understandably very limited in her responsibilities and freedoms. With the notable exception of Widowmaker —she had been granted permission to use the firing range on Erinyes, and only that— her and her crew were forbidden from going ashore.

To her credit, she did not hold it against her new superiors. Further trusting them would have been foolhardy and careless, and that kind of trust had to be earned.

That had given her plenty of time to meditate about her new position, such as she was doing now, leaning on the lectern next to the hologram projector in the CIC. Her former employer had 'cut her loose' — no doubt a temporary state of matters: what she knew of the Compact pictured it as a tight operation, but one depending on extraordinary levels of secrecy to operate, and when that veil was rent asunder, its members would be hunted down by their parent governments.

And that was where Cerberus would quite likely come in.

Was she going to be asked to inform on the Compact? She would not quote odds on that one.

An electronic bell rang three times, then the synthetic voice of the Mercy AI informed of the ship's CO coming aboard. She rose her head in surprise: Shepard had hinted that, at least for a few days, they would be stationed there.

The determined stride of the Starwatch colonel told her much even before she had noted her dour face. Even so, the brunette woman still looked on impassively. She had made her position doubly clear before and no amount of interrogation had caused her to yield.

However, this one time Aaliyah managed to surprise Miranda. Instead of starting yet again with the probing, she approached the lectern. A few commands to the hologram projector, and the device ceased to display a representation of the ship to instead depict a star system. It was vaguely familiar, she noticed at once…

No way, she told herself. But, clearly, it was yes way. They somehow knew of the place.

Miranda was unusually hard to read when she wanted to, but the flash of her pupils did not escape Shepard's piercing gaze.

"An unknown source tipped us about this place," she said simply. "This same source is clearly aware of your 'predicament' here, since it was hinted in the message that you know all there is to know about it, miss Lawson — which means, whatever organization you work for has a mole, and it's one that knows you personally. And," she added as her eyes bore into Miranda's, "while there's no direct link, I'm inclined to believe this is the same source that anonymously informed about your raid on Rix's outpost.

"My first question, of course," she paced slowly around the large projector, "is who this source would be. I'm not going to risk being led into a trap, if that's what I'm going to find there.

"You can continue stonewalling and stalling, but before we get into that, keep this in mind: if it's some relief or rescue you're expecting, it's not coming anytime soon. If you don't help, long before then, I will know by myself what's going on there — even if I have to flatten the place. We can avoid that if you cooperate.

"I imagine you would think that if your crew can't have the place we shouldn't have it either. If that's your idea, go ahead. But there will be a price to pay for that."

Miranda's brain raced. Either Sombra had seen it fit to blow the whistle, or the Illusive Man had once again let her learn of stuff that he wanted her to leak. Why would he allow the Compact to learn about something as delicate as this? Maybe he wanted the Citadel to know about it? But why go that far when… she was proof?

If she acquiesced to Shepard's demand, there was a sliver of a chance the place could continue its work, if a very slim and tiny one. Refusing meant that chance would vanish — and she would also surrender all ability to influence how aggressively the Compact would pursue all the leads this would open up.

She bowed to the inevitable and nodded. "Lacroix and Reyes can answer who the source is better than I."

Aaliyah kept a rigid control of her features. "Mercy," she said quietly, "order Gabriel Reyes and Amélie Lacroix here."

"Yes, Shepard."

The former Talon agents arrived some scant few seconds later. " _Qu'est-ce?_ " the woman asked.

"Miss Lawson here says you can tell me about the source that tipped us off about both your operation on Iera and this."

Reyes glared at the star chart. His jet-black eyes were cold as ice. "So she sold us out. I should have seen it coming."

Shepard did not veer her eyes off them. "Explain."

Amélie spoke then. "Does the name of Sombra bring anything to mind, _mon colonel?_ "

"Should it?"

The former Blackwatch commander snorted. "Just as I thought." He then elaborated: "Sombra was the alias of a hacker that worked for Talon. Strictly as a merc. She had her own agenda but we never found out what that was."

"She was astonishingly good at it," Amélie related. "You could never see her, unless she wanted you to. To name two things, she could hack every implant and camera within line of sight and commandeer omnic frames."

Shepard eyed them alternately. "And she's still active."

Miranda nodded. "Our previous mission was to locate and recruit her. She had been the guest of a weapons dealer on a freeport. She came with us, but a lot about the episode remains unclear." She gave both ex-Talons a cool glare. Neither volunteered anything.

Aaliyah did not miss that. Clearly this Sombra still had something she could use against Lacroix and Reyes. And the fact that she had seen no mention of her on the Overwatch files available to her could mean one of two things: either the intel available on her was still sealed away with the Blackwatch stuff, or she simply was that good.

"Why would she expose you? And inform on this place?"

"Gabriel said we never found what her agenda was. Why would she do it this time, we can't say either," Amélie said quietly.

"I can hazard a guess, for the good it will do," Reyes offered dryly. "Neither of us really enjoyed the idea of being sent on a retaliatory mission."

 _A retaliation for the Elysium incident?_ "That's what the attack on Iera was?"

"And a waste of time and resources," he agreed bluntly, "but now that I know that she informed on us, I think she did so because she believes we're more useful here."

That was a radical thought. "Useful to whom?"

Reyes shrugged. "Hate me all you want, but even you'll agree that having me on board gives you a lot more staying power on the battlefield."

"And by planting you here she has people she can milk for intel on the Compact."

Lacroix gave Shepard a cool look. "What makes you think she can reach us without you knowing about it?"

"Nothing stops me from thinking you would if you could."

"Spycraft is not our line of work," Reyes said curtly. "If we were going to act against you, we would kill you. You said it yourself: if we wanted you dead you'd be dead several times over already."

Aaliyah had to concede that point. She exhaled and admitted, "So all I know is that I don't know what this… Sombra is up to."

Gabriel had a short, deep laugh at her expense. "That makes us equal."

A deep breath. "We'll need to continue this discussion later. Right now it's more important to know what's going on in this place."

Neither Lacroix nor Reyes said a word. It was Miranda who spoke: "That place houses a research installation where most of the work on biotics was done."

That answer came as a lightning bolt out of the blue. Slowly Shepard sat down. "Good. Continue."

"Most of the installation is underground," the Cerberus officer detailed. "It's an extensive facility." She went on to describe the place over the next few minutes. 'Extensive' was quite correct, actually. The complex housed a select staff of scientists, a guard force, experimental materials and a sizable number of test subjects.

"'Test subjects'?" Shepard asked piercingly.

"As you know, biotic talents on other species depend on prenatal exposure to element zero. The Teltin facility was tasked with finding out all the ways eezo affects the human body, ranging from nervous response to potential carcinogenesis, so a protocol could be devised for creation of subjects with biotic potential similar or superior to those of other races — and tasked to do it at all costs. So, naturally, live test subjects were a no-brainer."

The Starwatch colonel was horrified, but a part of her understood the reasons. She could recall the recordings of the firefights aboard the London, back in the days of the First Contact War: Asari biotics had been powerhouses that decided engagements all on their own, with only elite troops being able to match them.

"Talon would have ran it that way," Reyes noted. Lacroix did not comment.

"Who authorized this?"

Miranda shook her head. "I'm sorry, colonel. I have detailed knowledge of this place, but it does not include that."

"Then on whose authority does it run?"

She hesitated, but responded: "This is a self-contained operation. No reports are made for fear of leaks. In fact, it's quite likely the facility will be evacuated the moment it is discovered that you know about the place."

"That doesn't answer my question."

Miranda stared at Shepard hard. "Colonel, I understand. I've already given you all the information I could about this place. I know you're a relentlessly dedicated officer that would aggressively pursue every lead available, but in doing so you could cause more damage than you think. The agency I worked for—" she stressed the 'worked' "—may be someone you could turn to for help eventually."

Aaliyah felt a surge of indignation, then forced herself to process what she had said and implied. "I have a mission bigger than anything your 'former' agency is up to. I must prevent a war between the Alliance and the Citadel, and find out who is so interested on seeing that happen."

"And how would the interruption of this facility's research contribute towards those goals?" Miranda asked simply.

"What if your agency is the one trying to stir up trouble?" Shepard countered. "If they were, then what do you think I should do about people with access to human biotics — to people like you? You already were involved in a retaliatory strike."

"Our people is aware of the dangers. If the intention really was to cause damage, then there were much better targets to pick. You surely know that, colonel."

Still, Miranda knew she had lost. Aaliyah confirmed it: "You surely know too that I'd be naive if I took your word for it."

* * *

To her chagrin, Aaliyah had been forced to box away her concerns about the Teltin facility. It was not strictly a Compact matter, but an Alliance one instead, and letting any Citadel operative know about this was out of the question. And they could not assign someone outside the Compact to look into it either — on one hand, their main sponsor —Hackett— clearly depended on someone co-opted by Miranda's nebulous 'agency,' and on the other, that same agency could have the Alliance Navy infiltrated at a lower level, and Shepard did not want to risk alerting it.

She had to find an opportunity to act on this, but she could only bring humans and omnics with her, and she did not see what kind of excuse she could come up with to do it.

Furthermore, something had come up on Garrus' side, and he had been summoned to deal with it. Anderson was also away, having been ordered to Arcturus for an urgent briefing. So, for the time being, they were idle.

Might as well take the opportunity to have a meal, and one not overshadowed by urgencies. As a large deep space installation, Erinyes was decently stocked with food appropriate for all of the species that lived and worked there, but it was, again to her displeasure, nothing special.

It was the same case with Wrex. "How do you call this on your homeworld?"

"Why, we call it meat," Martinsson replied deadpan.

The Krogan let out a rumbling chuckle. "Funny. Now what kind of meat is this?"

"Livestock," Shepard answered. "I doubt you know what a cow looks like." She chewed without relish. It was tough and dry, but she knew that having meat there at all was a luxury.

Nobody had expected Wrex to deal with a fork and knife, and he did not. Like Shepard, he bit a mouthful equally disappointed. "Too small and too lean for my taste."

"They can weigh up to a ton," Astrid noted casually.

"Hmph. Small stuff."

"Tell me, Wrex," Anika asked, "what's your typical farm animal like?"

The Krogan laughed. "Farm animal? Where I live there's no farm animals. We hunt them."

"What? You don't breed livestock?"

"No. Most of my people believe that working the land and breeding animals is for weaklings." His scathing voice spoke volumes about his thoughts on the matter.

"And you disagree with it," Park, the young hardsuit pilot, said questioningly.

Wrex scowled angrily. "My species is killing itself off. How many examples of Krogan farmers and scientists have you heard of?"

"Well, I haven't been there, but, come to think of it… " Shepard said dubiously.

"There are none," was the blunt reply. "All Krogan want is to fight, so they fight — they become guns for hire. So they leave Tuchanka. Few come back. And given that few children survive…" His pause was filled with anger. "But the clan chieftains are all about 'the glorious past' and 'retaking what's ours.' Dumb. What we need is to band together, pool resources. Really retaking the only thing that's ours, our only planet. But that's hard work and nobody likes hard work."

Tracer grunted. "I have yet to meet a species to which that doesn't apply."

Wrex's scowl deepened. "Our people likes it even less. With the chieftains talking wonders about the galaxy we almost had…"

"There must be more people thinking like you do," Anika said concerned.

"There is," he agreed. "But in Krogan society there's only one way to change things: you got to become a chieftain yourself. And then you need to have the shamans on your side, or they'll spoil anything you try. They're all about 'keeping traditions.' You can guess which traditions are those."

"Let me guess," Amari said dryly: "Strength, honor, purity."

A mirthless chuckle. "You cheated."

"If I hadn't heard a bit about it," Shepard quipped, "I'd be wondering how you made it to the stars in the first place."

Wrex shook his head. "We shouldn't have left our world. Ever. We weren't ready."

Anika was surprised. "I would have thought you were a proud race."

"Yeah, we are a proud race. Now look where that has brought us."

Park gave him a dubious look. "I don't know how to reconcile that with the genophage…"

Shepard shot him a warning glare, but one that was largely unnecessary.

"Simple. It's in the past. We had it coming, we hadn't, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we're dying. And the people who could change it are busy quarreling over what's left."

Amari was once again dry and flat. "Then get rid of them."

"The thought has crossed my mind," he admitted. "But my own father took pains to stamp out the bunch I had gathered to try and change something. After he double-crossed me and tried to kill me on hallowed ground."

Shepard was silent for a while, her drink still on her hands. "I'm sorry to hear that, Wrex."

A grunt. "Why should you be? Like it was some of your business."

Aaliyah put her glass on the table. "You know, I could think it's just the rant of an outcast, but I feel there's more to it. Your ideas could help your race if you talked to the right people. And if you take a few others out of the way first. Say, for instance," she suggested, "you can't remove all the clan chieftains in one stroke all by yourself. But you can remove the chieftain of your own clan."

"Nothing I haven't thought or tried. But I can't now." He shook his head. "People back home know about me, what I tried to do, and what happened to those who tried to help me out. They won't help now."

* * *

"We have put feelers out," Nihlus announced a day later, as a way of getting their meeting started. "All of us Spectres here agree that the timing on the raiders that jumped you on Iera was awfully convenient, but we still haven't found out if there was someone behind them. They were hired guns, but they didn't belong to any of the large syndicates or mercenary companies."

"Awfully convenient, indeed," Shepard grunted. "I wonder if the Blood Pack goons sent after Dr. T'Soni were somehow related."

"We have considered it," Vasir nodded. "We hope to learn more about it soon."

Garrus raised a hand: "Before we get this briefing going, there's something I must report. A Migrant Fleet exile residing on Illium passed on a distress call to me, and I must respond to it."

"What is it about?" Bau asked.

"Jaenna'Gisal is Shilu'Vael's mother." Aaliyah involuntarily cringed when she heard this, but said nothing. "She has some reputation as an unofficial figurehead for the local Quarian emigres, and has been a trusted source of intel on Illium for years — she passes on whatever she judges to be of interest to us, and I return the favor sharing data relevant to her.

"On her last message, Jaenna'Gisal told of a girl undergoing the Quarian rite of passage, their so-called Pilgrimage. This girl, one Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, is the daughter of a high ranking admiral on the Migrant Fleet, and to hear her put it, she gambled her life by sneaking into abandoned Quarian colonies to mine data on the Geth. It apparently paid off big time, but someone sniffed her: she evaded capture out of sheer luck, and the moment she was again on Terminus space, she had to stay on the run from mercenaries after her.

"Jaenna'Gisal is giving her shelter right now, but word is on the street that there is a bounty on Tali'Zorah, and the mercs are shaking up every Quarian they come upon. She can't protect her for long. This girl needs to disappear before they disappear her."

Alliance and Citadel people exchanged looks. "It's premature, but I can't help but feel there's a pattern here," Shimada argued. "Mercenaries surprised us on Iera. More mercenaries attacked Dr. T'Soni's site on Therum. Now I hear that mercenaries are out of the blue behind an acquaintance of your informant who seems to have found something of importance. There's no evidence of this being anything other than a coincidence, but my training and experience have taught me not to regard apparently unconnected events as mere coincidences."

Shepard was surprised to find herself wishing she had Lacroix and Reyes here so she could draw on their experience, ill gotten as it was. But before she could say anything, Anderson cut in:

"You don't know how right you are, Genji. Apologies for interrupting, but I think the news I bear are related to this. Zenyatta is coming to join our efforts here. He sent a message ahead of him: the Geth told him and his fellow omnics that the ship that attacked Elysium was on the Perseus Veil. Saren was aboard it. We don't yet know what Saren told the Geth, and most certainly we don't know either why they allowed him there on the first place, but we were informed of the results: a schism has happened on the Geth collective. A part of them went with Saren."

Vasir paled. Rix, Nihlus and Bau were equally shocked. "By the Goddess… if the Geth attack some Citadel colony we'll have a panic in our hands." Amari shot her an annoyed glare, clearly upset by the 'Citadel' distinction.

"If there was room for doubt about him going rogue, now there is none," Rix said curtly.

"What your agent suggests makes a lot more sense now," Bau gestured at Genji. "We must answer this call. If this Quarian has information relevant to this we can take it to the Council and bring our operation into the open. That will grant us greater leeway to stop Saren."

"Can we go to Illium?" Anika asked.

"On paper, it's a world ran by Asari corporate interests," Vasir informed. "But the Matriarchy has co-opted everyone worth co-opting there, they have agents and sources all over the place. You can go, but your presence there will be noticed."

Aaliyah's hunch intensified. "Maybe we should find a clandestine way in."

Anderson was unsettled by that. "The Alliance doesn't have much in the way of assets in place there," he manifested. "If you try to sneak in and you are detected, it's going to attract a lot more attention."

Tracer voiced Shepard's thoughts: "No assets that you know of, that is. We could ask the guests aboard our ship. If I heard right, they seem to be uncannily well connected."

"It's a security risk," Nihlus objected at once.

"I agree," Shepard said forcefully, "but right now, the stakes are too high. Besides, even if they could somehow foil Mercy, we have Lumiscant and Brulirea to keep a constant eye on our communication channels. I stand by them." Both omnics respectfully bowed their head in thanks.

"They will only help you part of the way," Vasir warned her. "Once you land on Illium, you'll have to rely on your Mercy AI only. And pray that nobody notices it. Illium is more lax than most Citadel worlds but AIs are still banned."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ as usual, **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** contributed priceless help in reviewing and poking holes in my writing as needed. Usual, but no less appreciated for that. Kudos to you, guys.


	24. Citadel: Exposure

Nos Astra - Illium surface

The shuttle settled on the launch pad with soft hydraulic hisses.

"Alright, here we are," Martinsson said forcefully.

"It's been said already, but I'll repeat it," Nihlus warned. "This is Citadel territory in all but name. We can appeal to Spectre authority in a fix, but the more discrete the better."

Tracer shrugged. "I'm fine. You're the guvner here."

After a tense argument, the Spectres had allowed Shepard to use the network of contacts from Lawson's previous agency, even though the woman had warned that, quite likely, everyone already knew she was burned.

"If we get a positive response, it can only mean you are being expressly allowed to use that asset," Miranda had said.

An already disquieted Nihlus had only grown even more uneasy upon hearing that. "This is a recipe for disaster."

"We have already discussed that there are no good options here," Shepard had reminded him. "You've already said none of you has the kind of obscure and very personal connections here that would have escaped scrutiny from your fellow Spectres — and hence, from the Matriarchy. The Alliance never had anything other than a few underworld contacts which no doubt you knew about. The only thing we're left with here is a clandestine network of unknown extent and dubious reliability. Are we going to debate again whether it's best to use it or to knock on the front door?"

Nihlus and Rix had grumbled their discontent but reluctantly allowed that there was no other way around. Aaliyah did not like it either, but she had committed herself to that course, so there was no point in arguing about it anymore.

They had barely reached the Tasale system when they had received the news: Jaenna'Gisal's safe house had been penetrated, and both her and her guest were on the run. A second report forwarded by Rix informed that they had found sanctuary, but where, they had not told, and he did not know either. Thus, the race was on — and their adversaries had a head start.

Miranda had had them steer not for the main starport in Nos Astra, but for a small launch pad improvised atop an unfinished building, one that clearly had meant to become another of the many skyscrapers of this sprawling city. The fact that they had only been raised once on the radio, with nothing in the way of tracking to follow, had only made the Citadel crew even more uncomfortable. Worse still, Lawson had only agreed to help after being given assurances that, as long as the people whose support she managed to secure did not do anything that put the lives of others at risk, the Spectres would not endeavor to investigate her network.

"Alright, miss Lawson, you've brought us this far," Shepard said coolly. "Who's our contact here?"

"We're about to find out." Miranda eyed Anika expectantly.

"You're clear." _But we're listening,_ her eyes said. She got a perfunctory nod in response.

They opened the airlock. On the other end of the boarding ramp a single person was waiting.

"I'll be damned if I don't trust my eyes," the stranger said. His face was a ghastly visage of overlapping burns. "The very Gabriel Reyes himself in the flesh. Aren't you supposed to be rotting away somewhere?"

The assassin smiled broadly. "Zaeed Massani. You've come a long way from being cannon fodder."

The man's face broke in a predatory grin. "Well, what can I say. After your pal Morrison ran Talon to the ground I had to go somewhere else."

Reyes looked around him. "The Zaeed I remember was a resourceful bastard. For sure he wouldn't have ended up in a dump like this."

"I've hit a rough patch," was the reply. It sounded like sandpaper grating on a blackboard. "But I'm a tough motherfucker. Not as tough as you are, but I'll get right back up. You just watch." He rested his eyes on Widowmaker's sinuous figure, leering at her: "I see you're still keeping your French murderer around. Good to see you, _mon chérie._ Gets my blood running." Amélie was disgusted by the lecherous look, but Widowmaker did not give him anything other than a withering glare. "Who's the rest of your crew… no way, you've gotten that little… girl to jump ship?"

"Not exactly." He gestured at Shepard. "She's the boss here. That's all you need to know."

The Starwatch colonel appraised the man. His eyes were mismatched, and given what she could see about his injuries he had survived through more than an entire platoon of soldiers put together. At least one of his limbs was artificial, and even so he moved with a swagger that proclaimed he did not fear anything. A tough-as-nails mercenary, and by his own words, once a Talon man. He appeared quite old indeed. "What have you been told?"

"Only that I had to expect her." He pointed half-heartedly at Miranda. Aaliyah noted that, even if Lawson's outfit was even more sheer and revealing than that of Lacroix, he did not leer at her as he had done with Widowmaker. "Fee's already paid, so let's talk business. Whose ass are you after?"

She found herself liking the situation less and less. Miranda had not been seen making any arrangements to pay for this man's services, but it could just as easily be a previously existing arrangement — as his attitude towards Lawson appeared to be proof. "You in touch with the merc community, I gather."

The man laughed hoarsely. "In touch? I built up a good chunk of it. They kicked me out, but I'm coming back. Or more properly, they'll come back to me."

"They kicked you out? I hope you still have some good insider sources."

"I know the sorry lot better than they know themselves," Zaeed grumbled back. "Look, girl, you gonna keep running in circles or are we going to get to work?"

She ignored the bravado. "Someone put a bounty on a Quarian girl. Her name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. We need to find out who did it, and locate her before someone else does."

A frown appeared on the burn-scarred face. "You're late for that one. I heard someone already stormed her hideout."

"They found a safe haven," Garrus informed. He did not like this human, if his tone of voice was proof. "The woman sheltering our quarry told us herself, but she did not say where. She hasn't contacted us since."

The frown deepened. "So you say this woman trusted you enough to tell you they were safe, but not enough to say where they were? Call me paranoid, but I get the feeling she thinks someone's not playing nice in your outfit."

Shepard would have loved to dismiss that, but clearly someone (Sombra?) knew enough about the Compact to be able to reach her directly. How had that someone gotten that information was anyone's best guess. "That's being looked into," was all that she said.

"Well, girl, get your house in order," Zaeed grumbled. "I hate having to look over my shoulder all the time. Now, follow me."

* * *

Illium was touted as a place where the sophistication of the Asari met the rough-and-tumble of the Terminus worlds, with some hazards tossed in to spice up the mix. The truth was a little different, but just a little — in the malls and on the spindly outlines of the towers jutting the landscape there was glitter and style to see alright, but danger lurked about to swallow the unwary.

And the dangers here were all around. The ground level streets of Nos Astra were crowded, but the denizens were very modest at best. Carrying at least a sidearm was apparently mandatory here, with the local gangs being much more heavily armed.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the Undercity," Zaeed said mockingly. "Here in Nos Astra, the closer to the surface you live, the worse off you are."

"It's been some time since I my last visit," Valena Danaan noted. "Nothing here stays the same for long."

"Not glitzy and shiny down here, eh?" was the rough reply. "This place is why it's said Illium is not that far removed from Omega. Actually I like it better over there. It's a hellhole, but they don't pretend they're anything else."

It was readily apparent that Massani was well known enough if not already a local figure. Here and there he traded insults with this or that gangster and challenged another to a fistfight, supposing this other lowlife knew which end of the fist went where. The net result: Shepard's group was allowed to proceed unimpeded through the murky streets, despite openly wading into the turf of 'no less than five' gangs, according to their guide.

"These are all small timers," the merc explained hoarsely. "The really big groups maintain compounds better fortified than a Turian fire base. I haven't heard of Quarians being tight with any of those, so we won't go near them either."

Shepard glanced briefly at Nihlus and Garrus. They acknowledged her look but did not say anything. "Who are the big groups you're talking about?"

"The Blood Pack, the Eclipse corporation… and the Blue Suns." The last words hissed out. "Hades Security and the Fortaleza mercenary company also have bases here. Smaller ones, but they aren't interested in the kind of turf wars the others are so fond of."

Their detour took them into what passed for a shantytown on this world. Streets became tighter, but no less crowded. People here lived in ridiculously cramped spaces, as they could see when the occasional open door let them peek inside.

That amplified the impact of seeing what had become of Jaenna'Gisal's former hideout. It had apparently been another cramped flophouse, but now it was a scorched ruin, with holes blown in the walls and pieces of appliances, furniture and whatnot scattered everywhere.

There was some people there too. Not scavengers — they were too heavily armed for that.

"Hey, boys, look who's coming to pick at the bones," one of them said. At once the other ten-odd bounty hunters scattered about turned to face the newcomers. They all wore armour patterned in blue shades.

"Not surprised you'd see it like that, Candace," Zaeed growled in sandpaper-on-blackboard fashion. "You always were one to backstab others and scoop with all the money."

"You said it yourself. Remember? You can't defend it, 'twas never yours." Candace was black-skinned, bulky, and no stranger to violence, given the scars weaving across her left cheek. "So who are these morons with you? Gonna try and piss on the turf of your own crew?"

Reyes could have ended the standoff there and then, but he wanted to see how Zaeed dealt with it. He was not disappointed. Without warning, Massani's right fist bent Candace in two, then his knee found her forehead. Guns came out of their holsters, but Zaeed already had his former underling in a vise.

"You forgot who you were talking to, you pretentious bitch," he snarled in her ear. "I don't need no one to mess up any of you wet-nosed pricks. You go back to Vido and tell him he's doing a damn fine job at leading _my_ outfit. Now get lost."

He kicked the woman towards her crew. Cold looks were exchanged between the mercs and the Compact group. The former Blackwatch commander returned a Batarian's glare with a slow step forward and an even slower motion with his left thumb across his throat.

At length the bounty hunters decided it was not worth it.

"This isn't over, Massani," Candace hissed.

Out of nowhere, guns pointing at the woman suddenly manifested in Gabriel's hands. His voice became the low, almost guttural rasp Shepard remembered all too well. "We can end it right now."

The mercenaries quailed before him and did not need further incentive to leave.

"We haven't seen the last of your blokes," Tracer quipped dryly.

"Let them come," Zaeed said plainly, without bravado. "They've been at that for a year now. I'm ready for them."

"Let's hope they don't deliver on their threats today." Shepard's sharp retort was a reminder: _you have other concerns now_.

Nihlus and Garrus got to work. Aaliyah noticed they knew what they were looking for, so she surmised they had been here before at least once — and her hunch was proved right when Vakarian looked into the instrument panel of the kitchen, retrieved something from there and punched it into his omni-tool. She refrained herself from asking what it was that they had found: there were too many eyes and ears around. She would know soon enough, in any case.

Widowmaker was outside. She was gauging the faces she saw. She knew they were being watched —too many curious eyes, and not a few of them belonging to armed people— and liked it not at all. She was at her best when no one could see her, preferably perched atop somewhere high, but in this ramshackle and haphazard hodgepodge of corridors and flophouses dug around the foundations of the monumental skyscrapers, she felt naked.

She looked at her fellow troopers. They all were similarly uneasy. Her eyes met Tracer's, and she was briefly perplexed — she had expected to see cool apathy at best and open hostility at worst. But there was none of that. The Overwatch legend was also disquieted, discretely but carefully surveying the people around them, unable to shake that same feeling of exposure.

So everyone breathed inwardly a sigh of relief when Nihlus and Garrus walked out. An exchange of looks with Massani, and with a profusion of vulgarities and threats the grizzled veteran opened a path for them through the assembled onlookers and out of the slum.

"We won't shake these tails soon enough," Martinsson noted warily.

Zaeed glanced at her with a bored look on his burn-scarred face. "If no one's following, an ambush is coming." A second later he added: "Never hurts to think one's coming anyway."

* * *

"The place is supposed to be up ahead," Garrus informed.

"Let's get this over with," Reyes muttered. "Everyone knows we're here already."

This was no longer a rundown slum in the Undercity. It was a working class neighborhood instead, but it was not that far away from the surface that it was beyond its influence. It had small separate apartments instead of flophouses and walkways bridging the chasms between the buildings, hovercars racing at breakneck speeds over and below them.

"Lacroix and Vakarian, take position here," Shepard said. "You two should be able to cover the corridor from this point."

It was a long hallway, doors lining both sides. Apparently, graffitis were an universal custom, but instead of the haphazard and ugly-looking mishmash of sprays juxtaposing atop each other, the artist had composed a beautiful design that turned the whole hallway into an idyllic vista of a forest.

"I'm surprised the gangs would respect this mural," Martinsson noted. The corridors and stairs they had traversed to reach this place were saturated with all sorts of designs and sprays identifying this or that place as turf belonging to this or that group.

"Grove Alley is kind of an unofficial neutral ground for the small timers," Zaeed pointed out in his sandpaper-on-blackboard voice. "The big fish come here when they need to recruit muscle."

"So where's everyone?" Shepard asked. "There should be someone around at least."

"Something isn't right," Nihlus said quietly. "Stay sharp."

The message the Spectre had forwarded to the emergency mailbox —the address for which they had obtained from the chip retrieved on Jaenna'Gisal's hideout— had been answered with a number and a street: 644 Grove Alley. They were right at the door now.

Valena, Shepard, Reyes and Oxton took positions by the door, with Miranda, Wrex, Martinsson and Zaeed covering them, Ziegler slightly behind them in turn and in full view of Lacroix and Vakarian. Nihlus looked one way, then another, and then approached the locked door. A few taps on his omni-tool, then it slid open.

The flat was ordinary. The large living room had windows facing the chasm and the building on the other side of it. A kitchen, a bedroom, a restroom, and a small storage closet.

And that was it. The place was empty.

Nihlus exchanged glances with Shepard, then silently he gestured for the squad to enter.

"We've been had," Shepard said in frustration.

"Spread out," Nihlus instructed. "We have to search this place carefully…"

The bomb was simple enough, a typical low-yield antipersonnel fusion charge. The detonator, on the other hand, was a work of patience and mindfulness. The software in charge had been given precise parameters of activation, down to the measurements and mass of the people expected to trigger it. In this fashion, it recognized Nihlus and Danaan as exact matches on its database, with a few scant millimeters and not half a kilogram of weight of a difference between the readings and the values stored. It also recognized Shepard. At this point, the explosive was primed and ready to detonate, but the software was still searching for the primary target, the one its designer had considered most difficult to surprise or incapacitate with such a trap, and thus the most important one.

Then Tracer walked into the living room.

There was a pulse of light and a thunderbolt roared as the explosion tore through the Compact crew. A cloud of dust poured out into the corridor outside.

The backup team raced into the apartment. "Colonel! Lena! Are you okay?" Ziegler called out afraid.

" _*kaff* *kaff*..._ I… I'm alive… I think… _*kaff*_ " Shepard painstakingly rolled on her back and tried to sit up straight. She succeeded on the third attempt, and needed a few blinks to clear her sight, her head feeling numb and heavy.

Then she paled.

Clearly the explosive had gone off right next to Nihlus, for he had taken the worst of it — and that probably had saved the lives of the others. The shields on his armor had absorbed part of the blast, and that was probably the sole reason he was still whole. He was lying with his back against the wall in a puddle of his own blood… and Tracer was right next to him.

"Lena!" At once Anika was beside her. Tracer was out cold. Entire sections of her lightweight armor had been torn off. The core of her chronal accelerator was cracked and gave off sparks. A quick examination drew a grimace and an urgent: "We have to get them to the ship!"

Behind her, Aaliyah heard Reyes' boots. He did not sound very steady on his feet, but as she turned to look at him he straightened up.

"I'll take her there."

Apprehension at once appeared on Anika's and Shepard's faces. The former Blackwatch leader noticed this: "If I wanted her dead I wouldn't throw her over the rails behind your back, I'd blow her head off right here," he growled almost gutturally. "You want to save her life or not?"

Shepard wanted to argue he was more useful here, but Anika's urgent expression told her there was no time. A brief glance at the Asari, who had gotten off with minor scratches, then she agreed. "Then go. Anika and Valena, you go with them too."

Garrus came in next, Wrex and Miranda on his heels. When he saw what had become of Nihlus his face contorted in shock. At once he unslung his backpack and unpacked his first aid kit, and was about to start trying to dress his wounds when the Krogan interrupted him:

"You let me do that. Get help. He won't live long if he doesn't get proper care."

Vakarian was surprised by the gesture in more ways than one —a _Krogan_ helping a _Turian_ out of all people—, but Wrex clearly knew how to deal with the problem — and he was right.

"We can get transportation for Lena too?" Shepard asked.

Garrus was focused on his omni-tool. "I can, but we'll be blown. No way to disguise her. Everyone knows who is Tracer."

"We'll deal with that later. Right now it's critical to get her to the ship."

"I can try and arrange that," Miranda volunteered. "And keep her presence here a secret."

Shepard was faced with a dilemma. She did not trust the woman, and she did not want to expose their operation there either.

"Vakarian, is that you?" A female voice spoke roughly on the Turian's omni-tool.

"Jaenna?" He was startled, then he demanded: "Where in the name of all gods are you?!"

"On the run, you idiot!" she retorted as sharply. "I don't know what outfit are you running with, but you sure don't run a tight operation. Someone was in that flat before you came."

"No shit," Shepard muttered under her breath.

Garrus wanted to strangle the Quarian, but he could not fault her for being paranoid. Especially since she was right. He bottled his anger; the mission came first. "Where are you?"

"Some four stories over your head. If you got _reliable_ people with you, then get moving. We're with our asses out in the wind here."

"Roger." He closed the channel. "We need to go, right now."

Shepard turned to Lawson. "We'll do it your way. Martinsson, you stay with her. Contact me when you're in the ship."

A nod. "Understood."

"Reyes," she said next, "I'll make sure Lena knows of your offer, but right now all of us need you doing something else." _Doing what you do best,_ she added darkly in silence.

"Cram the emotional speech." Guns appeared again in his hands. "Which way?"

Garrus put aside his misgivings about Reyes for a moment and forwarded him the location. "There. Go ahead of us, you can get there faster than we can."

"Shimada and Lacroix, you go, too," Shepard ordered. "We'll meet you there."

* * *

"Vakarian, hurry up already!" Jaenna'Gisal shouted on her omni-tool. "We're pinned down here!"

"We're on our way!" came the reply. "Friendlies are closing in on your position, you should have backup soon."

A hoarse voice rasped, "I'm already here."

Both Quarians were startled. The younger one whirled around and pointed her shotgun at the figure that seemed to walk into existence right out of the shadows: "Stop right there!"

Reyes glared coldly at her. "Put that gun down before you hurt yourself." He walked right past them and towards the wreckage that had once been the front door, not caring at all about the weapons pointed at him. Gunfire was pouring in from an angle. He spoke on the squad's radio channel: "I hope it's not your friends, Zaeed."

"Who are you?" Jaenna demanded to his back.

He did not turn around. "I'm with your Turian friend. Now shut up and get ready to move."

In the hallway outside, Lacroix was cloaked and hanging down from the ceiling on her grappling hook. She scouted the assailants that had pinned the Quarians inside their hideout: "Four bounty hunters, Salarian and Turian." A few instants later she added: "More of them coming from their side."

"I'm on them." The stream of suppressive fire was cut short when a blade worked its way through one of the Turian assailants. In ancient days long past, Genji would follow up with a stream of shuriken and another blindingly fast dash to cut through flesh and armor like butter. It was not that different nowadays, actually, the only notable difference now being that his shuriken were pieces of ultra-hot graphene manufactured on the spot by his omni-tool, and he was no less precise with them. A Salarian trying to bring his rifle to bear against him would learn of this: a scream, and the lanky alien collapsed on the floor like a broken puppet, his ankles and wrists sliced clean.

The other two attackers managed to get clear and open up on him. Again a blade flashed, then the air was filled with the sounds of metal ricocheting on metal, and another of the aliens went down as the hail of gunfire was reflected right back at him. The other one put her weapon aside and readied a grenade — giving Widowmaker a perfect target. The mistake cost the alien her life.

" _Arigato,_ " Genji said quietly before cloaking again and darting to cover, just in time to see another six people turn around the corner on the hallway intersecting theirs. "Enemy spotted. One Asari, the rest a mix of Batarians and Turians."

"Roger," Reyes acknowledged. "I'll keep the Asari busy. You deal with the rest."

" _Affirmatif._ "

Invisible and absolutely still, Shimada let the bounty hunters run past him. They walked up to the corridor intersection where the bodies of the other mercenaries laid. Most of them were outfitted with submachine guns and other close combat arms, except for two sporting long rifles. One of the latter crouched, cloaked before his eyes, and peeked around the corner.

A large caliber rifle boomed. The merc's head blew in pieces, the rest of his body reappearing shortly afterwards. Widowmaker's shot was the signal Genji was waiting to spring into action. Omni-blades sprang on his wrists and he dashed through the bounty hunter team, then he somersaulted into the air, hurling shuriken after shuriken at his targets—

—a violent impact tossed Genji all the way down the hallway. He twisted in midair and managed to land on his feet, but he was fully exposed.

Amélie said curtly, "I got you covered, but not for long."

"I know. Shepard, they got a biotic with them, a good one."

"We're almost there now, hold them off a little longer!" came the reply.

Reyes, having heard this, turned to both Quarians. "Stay here." Then, to Lacroix: "Hold your fire until you get a clear shot."

Then he strode into the hallway.

The feminine alien flashed ablaze in blue. In the years following the First Contact War, Reyes had learned to avoid frontal confrontations with skilled biotics, resorting to ambushes or sneak attacks when it was necessary for him to deal with one. For the most part, the approach had proved lethal enough, but the skirmish in Freeport 74 had been a wake-up call of sorts: evasion was not always a choice, especially when he had squadmates to account for. The outcome of the raid on Iera had only reinforced this.

So he had sought Lawson's advice. The telltale blaze on his opponent brought her words to mind, and he readied himself. Like a cannonball, the Asari hurled herself at him blindingly fast, only to pass cleanly through him as he shifted into a cloud of ink-black smoke. In that same cloud form, he wrapped himself around his enemy—

—but, to his annoyance, he realized he could not consume her: the barriers of this Asari were too strong for him to breach as an intangible wraith. He shifted back into solid form, brought his weapons to bear and opened up as the alien blazed in blue again. A flash, and he became weightless as he was pulled towards the Asari; the invisible force gripping him started to constrict, and out of reflex again he became semisolid, just before another attack that would have sent him flying away detonated with an explosive thunderbolt. His form melted away, but he reformed a few steps from her, slightly dazed but otherwise unharmed. _Goddamned bitch, she's strong!_

He did not wait for her to cast another attack at him. Conscious of Lacroix and Shimada behind him, he ran at the Asari firing his weapons at her, wanting to keep her on the defensive; the submachine guns could not pierce that defense, but clearly were an annoyance that forced his opponent to reinforce her barrier. He ceased fire, giving her an opening on purpose, and she unleashed a cascade of blasts at him, but he dodged the attack by shifting into a puddle of darkness staining the ground, fully exposing the Asari in this way to Lacroix's rifle, who did not hesitate—

The rifle boomed. There was an acute ringing sound as the Asari reflected the shot right back. Genji had warned himself to expect that kind of move, given his experience when fighting Miranda and his own penchant for it, but Lacroix's was no ordinary rifle. The shot ricocheted on his blade blowing right through his left leg, caroming again on the wall behind him and piercing a hole through Amélie's shoulder. A feminine scream, and Widowmaker crumpled to the ground.

But unbeknownst to the Asari, Reyes was reforming behind her. This time, the point-blank burst chewed right through her barrier. He saw his opening now and turned again into a smoky spectre that engulfed his enemy. The alien gasped, but turned around and jumped into the air to smash the ground with a blazing fist. A deafening thunder flooded the hallways as the impact sent out a tremendous shockwave, dissolving Reyes' shadowy form—

—right at the time the rest of the Compact crew appeared on the corridor next to Genji and Widowmaker. Valena recognised what had just transpired and without warning charged forward, tossing a series of dart-like attacks at Reyes' assailant as she ran. The other Asari stood fast and absorbed it — and despite Garrus surprising her with a direct shot, her barrier still held, giving her time enough to realize she was outnumbered and overwhelmed. With a somersault she dodged the barrage fired her way, then turned ablaze for one last time, and darted away down the same alley she had come.

Shepard ran to secure the other end of the hallway, Wrex and Zaeed with her, leaving Anika to tend to Genji and Widowmaker and Garrus to cover her. She peeked around the intersection, seeing nothing other than the corpses of the dead mercenaries. "Clear here!"

Ziegler gave Shimada a quick check-out. "Nothing serious," she evaluated crisply, then produced an omni-gel canister and fabricated some sealant on the spot with her omni-tool to close the hole the caroming round had pierced through his cybernetic leg. It took her seconds to apply it.

" _Arigato_ ," he thanked her, and stood up. He glanced at Amélie: the sniper had already performed some first-aid herself by applying some medi-gel to her wound. The woman gave him a nod, her yellow eyes cool but not antagonizing him. He acknowledged her and hurried away to join Shepard.

"Keep your eyes open. This isn't over yet," the Starwatch colonel warned. She looked around: "Where's Reyes?"

Her answer came in the way of a puddle of liquid-like darkness slowly expanding around the corpses of the four mercenaries Lacroix and Shimada had first dispatched. With horrid fascination, Wrex stared as the corpses seemed to sink—no, as the corpses _sank_ into the puddle, one millimeter at a time, to ultimately vanish without a trace.

Reaper emerged from the puddle seconds later.

"That woman almost got me."

The Krogan was apoplectic. "What in blazes are you?"

Zaeed gave him a blank look, but did not comment on that, noting instead: "That's not the kind of stuff Talon dealt with."

Aaliyah had also watched, keeping her features under rigid control. She fought to box away the dreadful memories of what had happened to her team and the anger and rage they evoked, and forced herself to speak up instead: "Good job. You need some time?"

Reyes noticed the struggle in Shepard's face. He remembered their exchange a few days back, and that moved him not to bait her as he would usually have done. "Just a few seconds."

She nodded, then looked away, not trusting herself to contain the accusing voices inside her, and moved to get to work. Since neither Brulirea nor Lumiscant were available, engineering and sapping duties had fallen upon her, and thus she pulled out a hardlight extension for her omni-tool out of a hip satchel. "Garrus, I'm laying down countermeasures and defenses on this side. See to our VIPs."

"You got it."

Zaeed's omni-tool rang. He tapped it to open the message, then he frowned. "Ain't that peachy… Reyes! We don't have much time here. Someone's tipped off the Blood Pack; soon we'll be up to our eyeballs in vorcha. Then there'll be Eclipse and the Blue Suns to deal with too."

Aaliyah continued her work, setting up small defense turrets and spraying a layer of near-invisible and highly flammable adhesive on the floor. "I trust you know the best way out?"

"Yeah, but so do they," was the dry reply.

The Quarians came into the hallway and looked both ways. Her limited contact with Shilu'Vael had not taught Aaliyah how to read their body language accurately, but she could gather enough from their slow motions. "Vakarian, what is this?" Jaenna asked, dumbfounded. "You working with the Alliance now?"

"Later," was the brusque answer. He pointed at Shepard: "If you're ready to go, stay with her. Get moving!"

At that moment Aaliyah's own omni-tool vibrated: "Shepard, we've reached the ship," Lawson informed. "Nihlus and Oxton are being taken care of. Martinsson and I are aboard a shuttle now. Are you in need of extraction?"

The Starwatch colonel exhaled as if a great weight had been taken off her shoulders. "Damn straight we are." She turned to Zaeed: "We need a safe LZ."

The man frowned. "There are a few vents we can use a couple of floors going up, but it's not for a shuttle to land on. The closest place is six stories upwards, across the street. Smart money says the place will be watched, though."

"You think the building across the street will be tougher than this one?"

"I don't think so. But getting there ain't gonna be no walk in the park. I've been on the other side of this problem. I'd stake out the two closest walkways, deploy my teams on this building and post a few sentries on the ones around."

"Gunships?"

"It's not every day that someone puts a two million credit bounty on someone… But they wouldn't go that far. The Matriarchy turns a blind eye at the turf wars as long as they don't get out of hand. It's a large bounty, but if they used gunships they'd blow it all away on hush-money to get away with it — no gain worth the trouble."

Shepard considered her choices. These hallways were scarce in cover, and her squadshield could not see them through an extended firefight; if they were boxed in, short of breaking into the adjoining apartments they had no way of holding for long there. Taking the elevators was more or less equivalent to handing themselves over to the enemy in a lunchbox. While they could make their escape through the many stairwells about, a smart commander would have them all watched, and inevitably they would get cornered. The walkways between buildings were equally deadly: all it took to pin them down were a few really good sharpshooters, and if there were gunships about… Zaeed said it was unlikely, but…

There was no obvious answer. _A shit sandwich whichever way you look at it. If only we could have brought Amari and Park..._

"We'll take the walkways," she resolved at last. "Reyes and Shimada, you two scout ahead of us. If you can make it to the other side and get rid of lookouts and marksmen, we should be able to fight our way through. Lacroix," she asked next, "can you still fight?"

The assassin gave her a cool nod. " _Oui._ "

She pointed at Garrus. "You spot a gunship, you bring it down. Work with him."

" _Compris._ "

One last look around, then: "Alright, people, let's get going."

The hallway immediately above theirs was a little livelier: people scurrying to get into their apartments, fearfully looking at the weapons on their hands and evading their evaluating glares. The same thought flashed on everyone's minds, and they were resigned to it already. Their progress was being watched and reported. Still, they did not come upon anyone hostile here, and neither did they on the next level…

"I have spotted a Blood Pack squad coming your way," Genji reported quietly. "They're on the other side and about to cross the walkway. Three Krogan and a score of Vorcha."

"Get moving!" Garrus spurred them.

The Compact crew appeared on the doorway to the bridge while the Blood Pack squad was right in the middle. The Krogan in front only glanced at them for a second before bringing his rifle to bear, opening fire and letting out a rousing battle cry, the many vorcha he led answering with a chaotic chorus of shrieks and snarls. Shepard was expecting that and raised her shield at once as her crew took positions behind both sides of the doorway. A furious firefight ensued, but, as had been the case with the Krogan back on Therum, this one simply ignored the gunfire pelting him and strode pugnaciously out of cover—

—and then Garrus' shot broke through his arrogance when it tore off the hardened transparent cover protecting his right eye. The Blood Pack lieutenant snarled in pain and rage, then retreated back to cover, and waved the vorcha onward.

The triumph would, however, be short lived: "Contact, platoon of mercenaries coming at you from around the side," Reyes reported coolly. "They're your crew, Zaeed."

"Let me guess," the hoarse reply came: "Candace?"

"That same one."

"You go handle that with Reyes!" Shepard barked. "We'll manage this end!"

Candace had brought with her a squad of ten troopers, all of them heavily armed, she herself lugging a rocket launcher; Zaeed, following Reyes' directions, had moved to stake out a particular junction, with time just enough to erect a few protective screens to shield his position, so when the Blue Suns mercenaries came within view, they were greeted by a salvo of machine gun fire.

"Now who's coming to pick at the bones?" Zaeed snarled from behind the corner.

"What's the matter, Massani?" Was the baiting response. "Can't keep it on your own that you need help from others?"

His own answer sent splinters flying a few inches from Candace's face. "I think I told you I don't need no help to deal with you. Stay here and the last thing you'll see will be a gunflash."

 _Keep them distracted a little longer,_ Reyes messaged him. _I'm almost in position._

"Oh yeah? Well here's another offer for you," she shouted back. "If you give the girl to us you'll get your choice of ships off Illium for you and that bunch of losers you've brought with you."

"You don't really hope I believe you've grown a heart on the last few hours, eh?"

"There's two million reasons, old man. Your hearing not good? Age catching up with you?"

Zaeed spat. "If I can't get that bounty I'd rather give her over to the Pack. You saw me do it?" he barked, punctuating his comment with another burst that again drew splinters near her. "Draw your conclusions, if thinking isn't too painful for you."

"Don't say you didn't get your chance. Get him!"

It was, however, too late for them. Reaper —not Reyes— was already there. A Batarian yelled an alarm as the shadowy wraith rose from the ground right next to Candace, but she did not have time for so much as a glance before the shadow was on top of her. The smug look gave way to a rictus of terror—

—but then the wraith dissolved before her face into a cloud of inky black smoke that engulfed the whole platoon of Blue Suns mercenaries, and the hallway filled with screaming. Instants later, there was nothing left to prove they had ever been there—

—except for Candace, who bent over coughing explosively. Blood spattered the floor before her. She fell to her knees first, then on her hands, and tried to crawl away, but the burning pain inside her lungs tormented her relentlessly as her body tried —and failed— to expel the stuff that was eating her from the inside out.

Massani stopped next to her and put the barrel of his Revenant machine gun to her face. "I told you this was the last thing you'd see."

He pulled the trigger. The corpse fell limp.

Then he turned around. He did not want to see how Reaper consumed what was left of her.

But someone else was arriving to join that engagement: "YMIR mechs, YMIR mechs! Massani, there are three YMIR mechs turning around the corner and making for your corridor!" Genji alerted from his vantage point across the bridge.

There was only one thing for Zaeed to do now. He tossed his machine gun aside, reached for the rocket launcher his once-subordinate had lugged but never gotten a chance to use, and waited.

The first YMIR mech took only one step into Massani's corridor. The VI software running it had anticipated an ambush, and the first part of the mech that Zaeed saw was a machine gun pointed right at him, but his rocket was faster. The first warhead blew the gun arm away, and the second missile wrecked the servos on a leg. The huge robot tilted drunkenly and fell on its side, in doing so becoming an obstacle the other two such mechs behind it could not easily negotiate.

"We can hold them off here, but not forever!" the mercenary yelled at Shepard on the squad comm channel.

"Enemy lookout neutralized," Genji informed. Then there was the pulsing noise of engines in the sky and he warned: "Possible aircraft incoming from your left side!"

The 'possible' was soon realised when the black shuttle appeared from around the bulk of their tower and approached the walkway. The side door slid open, and half a dozen vorcha opened up with their guns in a wildly inaccurate barrage that nonetheless partially accomplished its objective: force the Compact squad to keep their heads down behind cover.

The only ones still standing were Shepard, who was covering the retreat of the rest with her squadshield, and Valena behind her. They exchanged looks for an instant, then Valena blazed blue and, with a hurling motion, she tossed Aaliyah inside the passenger deck of the shuttle, right in the middle of the gaggle of vorcha ready to jump on top of the Compact crew. The impact knocked one of the troopers out cold and sent the others sprawling about, but the surprise would not last long, and Shepard knew it. The first of the mongrel like aliens charged at her with a piercing shriek; she seized it by a wrist, and with a twist of her waist, she tossed it behind her and down the chasm to its death. In the same fluid motion, she sent a slug through the right eye of another who had tried to profit from the distraction. Gunfire flashed in the small passenger deck as the Starwatch colonel and the Blood Pack grunts traded shots, but here Shepard's mastery with sidearms saw her through: two rounds, one on the chest, the other on the head, then she would parry the riposte with her squadshield and fight defensively, looking for another chance to double tap a foe—

Suddenly the shuttle swerved violently and banked left as its engines roared with more power. Both Shepard and her enemies were startled by that, and the horizon behind her, crowded by towers as it was, disappeared to be replaced by a labyrinthine maze of streets teeming with blinking lights.

Everyone reached for a hold. The screech of nails on metal filled the deck as three vorcha tried to find purchase on the floor, to ultimately fail and fall off the craft screaming. Another crashed into Aaliyah, tumbled half out of the shuttle and, in desperation, wrapped both arms around her left leg. "LET GO!" she snarled furiously, then the panel she was latched to came loose. On the spot she triggered her hardlight projector, and the beam attached itself to the bulkhead opposite the now-open sliding door; four frantic kicks with her free leg, and the last vorcha also fell off the shuttle.

Which left Shepard alone in the passenger deck dangling from a hardlight umbilical cord attached to a bulkhead — and the chaotic tumbles of the craft as it went told her that—

A violent jolt slammed her against the floor. The impact knocked the breath out of her, but her lifeline thankfully held. She sought a hold for a desperate instant with her right hand, and found purchase on a hole made by some gun. Another violent jolt, but she did not let go. An odd streak of light blinded her briefly—and that caused her to realise that the shuttle was spinning. What she had seen was the sun setting, and now the blazing shape circled chaotically behind her.

She had only one way out. Holding for dear life with her right hand, she waited for the right moment—and when it came, she cut her hardlight lifeline, then cast it anew at the inner partition separating the flight and passenger decks. It caught. A few tumbles and twists, and she hit the partition with her shoulder, to then work her way painstakingly towards the cockpit. The pilot's brains were splattered across the windshield, so she did the only thing she could; she reached for the controls and tried to stabilize the shuttle—

—just in time to see it about to crash heads-on against a building. In panic she sent it on a straight vertical climb, and the shuttle sped upwards, scarcely a meter away from the windows. She passed by the walkway before the incredulous eyes of the Compact crew, and struggled with the controls, appealing to what little piloting skill she had, to pull away from the building and come into level flight.

She nearly collapsed with relief when, at last, the horizon was visible through the blood on the windshield.

"Alright, I've stabilized this," she breathed on the radio. "Let's go home."

* * *

Flying was something Aaliyah preferred to leave in the capable hands of Amari or Tracer, but they had agreed there was no way Pharah's daughter could deploy without being instantly recognized as an Alliance soldier —jumpjet infantry was a specialty unique to humans—, and Lena was injured, which meant there was no one to fly the craft other than her. The Mercy AI helped, which meant that attempting to land a shuttle she had never seen before in her entire life was not something what would end with a crash.

"Feet on the ground in 3… 2… 1…" The shuttle settled down next to the _Girls' Night Out_ with a jolt. Some warning lights appeared on a side panel. _Fuck it, it won't be me who has to fix this brick._ "We are on the ground, everyone GO, GO, GO!"

The Compact crew and the two VIPs they were escorting raced out of the hijacked shuttle and towards their corvette. Lawson and Martinsson were waiting by the boarding ramp:

"Everything ready to go?"

"Yes, colonel, but—"

Shepard interrupted Miranda: "Can we go or not?"

A nod. "Yes, we can go now."

"Then let's get off this rock. Mercy, you have the wheel."

"I have the wheel," the AI acknowledged her.

With her usual efficiency, Mercy eased them softly off the landing pad. Shepard, Garrus, Lawson and Martinsson were on the bridge, expecting to be hailed by the Asari military or something else to go wrong in that fashion, but everything went off without a hitch.

The moment they entered orbit, Aaliyah exhaled slowly. "Betting on you paid off."

Miranda acknowledged that with a nod. "Thank you, ma'am."

Garrus was uneasy. "Let's only hope using her network doesn't come back later to haunt us."

Shepard had to agree with that. "If we must, we'll deal with that when the time comes. You said there was something else?"

Before Miranda could answer, Valena raised the bridge through the internal speakers: "Shepard, Vakarian, you should come over here the moment you can."

Ziegler and the Asari were there, about to start working on Tracer and Nihlus, but there was a third person there:

"Tela Vasir? What happened to her—" her brain needed a few instants. _Her armor is the same as…_ "Holy shit… Her? It was her?"

Another person arrived then on the med bay: Reyes. His eyes went briefly over Oxton and the Turian Spectre, but he approached the bloodstained, unconscious Vasir instead. There were no visible wounds on her, but blood had dribbled down her mouth and nostrils.

Without a care in the world, the former Talon operative started removing the Asari's upper armor. "What are you doing?" Anika demanded.

He did not answer for a few seconds. Once her chest was exposed, he felt her sternum and ribs with his hands, then opened her mouth and nostrils. Then he glanced at Shepard and Garrus:

"I trust that you want her to live."

He got nods in response. A frown appeared on his otherwise expressionless face, then he covered her naked chest with a blanket. "Her lungs are wrecked. It's not something you can fix here. Put her on a stasis tube."

Ziegler gaped at him. "How do you…"

"Doc, you got two other people to worry about." He raised his right hand, holding a small memory card on his fingers. "For the time being I think this ought to yield a few answers."

There were a dozen different questions blazing on Shepard's mind, but she decided they would wait. "For now." She gestured at him to give her the card. Reyes complied, bringing up in this way yet another question, but once again she decided it would wait. "Everyone, clear out. Let Anika and Valena do their work."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ **BrokenLifeCycle** contributed some diabolical ideas about Reaper, on top of his usual proofreading and criticism. **kyro2009** also has my thanks for his help.


	25. Citadel: Unveiling

_Girls' Night Out_ \- Tasale system

"I got it," Vakarian announced curtly.

"Alright," Shepard approved. "Let's see what she has in store for us…"

After a few seconds of scrolling down the screen, Garrus observed: "This… is a contact log. Voice records and some notes. Stretches back some seven years." Aaliyah saw the Turian glance at the door to make sure it was properly closed and locked, then tap on one at random.

The first voice they heard had been clearly mangled by some software into something that could not belong to any known sentient race, but it still was understandable enough:

"Vasir, what an unexpected surprise," the voice spoke dryly. "To what do I owe the pleasure this time?"

"I'm looking for a Hegemony agent," the Asari said without preamble. "He's been giving the Alliance all kinds of trouble on the Skyllian Verge. It has transpired that he's gotten his hands on critical data about their defensive dispositions. We want it."

A brief pause, then: "I know who he is. He hasn't sold that data to me. But I can point you in the right direction if you want to contact him without intermediaries."

"That's exactly what I want. Now name your price."

"One of my sources has to disappear. The STG is on to her. I want you to help stage an 'accident' she could not possibly survive and find her an obscure corner where she can retire to."

"That's too much to ask for just a hint on where this agent is."

"I agree," the mangled voice allowed. "Our previous arrangement for this kind of exchange stands. You may ask for a similar deal in the future."

They heard her exhale heavily. "Alright… last time it worked out fine. I accept."

Vakarian paused the audio. "I know of this. It happened almost six years ago."

"Did she get the data?" Shepard asked keenly. "What was it about?"

"Foreknowledge about when the Arcturus fleets would rotate, and progress reports on the construction of the orbital defenses on Elysium."

She had to search her memory for a few instants. "We were deployed there for two months. The briefing had claimed that there were 'indications that a raid was imminent.'"

"Probably you scared someone off," Garrus guessed. "I don't know if there was an operation on our side, but the Batarians are always looking for chinks in your armor."

 _The bastards hate us more than they hate you._ "But who was she talking to?"

They checked a few other logs. They all were recordings of conversations between Vasir and the owner of that mangled voice. Vakarian hesitated: "I'm not sure… but probably this is the first time someone catches the Shadow Broker on tape. After a fashion."

"I have heard rumbles about that name… he's kind of the all-time king of the information brokers, if I got that one right."

"You got that one right," the Turian confirmed. "He—supposing it's a he, disguising your voice is child's play—he's got sources and contacts everywhere, but nobody's ever gotten a hint on who he actually is. This is all hush-hush, but I heard the last time the STG made a concerted effort to expose him, they had to cease the operation before they had gotten anything meaningful because a third of their sources in Citadel and Terminus space dried up."

Shepard's eyes bulged out briefly. "Nobody has that much juice."

"Nobody you know of. He's a slippery bastard."

She thoughtfully nodded. The obvious question would be what kind of capabilities this information broker could have on Alliance space. As always had been the case, the weak link on any security system was the human component; that problem had been greatly mitigated by the advent of AIs, but the only way to eliminate it outright was to cut humans entirely out of the loop, which was simply out of the question.

Not to mention that it would create a dangerous Achilles' heel if someone ever discovered a vulnerability on the AIs themselves.

"Is it usual for the Spectres to deal with him like this?"

"Well, you have a saying for this, I understand… 'you're barking up the wrong tree', is it? Impossible to say, every Spectre is a law unto herself. A contact like this is as black as black operations come, but you know that in this line of work you're always meeting and dealing with the most unlikely of people." The Turian arched his eyebrows. His voice dripped with irony: "How do you think our kind of, er, 'business relationship' would look in the eyes of most of our respective fellows?"

"Point taken." Another thoughtful nod. "She must have been one hell of a source for him if he dealt directly with her. It was quite the security risk for both sides. But then, both would keep logs of their conversations, as a way to hedge their bets, right?"

"To 'hedge their bets'?" Garrus repeated in puzzlement.

"Er… it's a figure of speech from gambling. When you 'hedge your bets', you leave yourself a means of retreat open. You protect yourself against loss by supporting more than one possible outcome from a move. It's not spot-on for this, but close enough."

"Oh." He stared briefly at Aaliyah. "Your language is full of crazy twists, but they all end up making sense in the end. It's fascinating, actually."

"That's the kind of wording that drove omnics nuts. They tried to get the literal meaning of things and would rack their, er, heads when it didn't make sense."

The parallel between himself and the AIs shocked Garrus for an instant. If they were more or less equal in that regard…

"Let's check the last log," he proposed, realising they were getting off track. Shepard nodded.

"I'm calling in my last favors," the mangled voice said in a tone that allowed for no compromise. "There's someone I need eliminated outright. A Quarian. I don't have exact details on where she's hiding, but I know she went to Nos Astra."

"What's her name?"

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

Two whole seconds of silence followed.

"This Quarian has critical information for the Compact," Vasir pointed out. "We need her. We need what she knows."

Again, a pause.

"Are you implying that you refuse to carry out this assignment?" the voice asked. Shepard felt shivers.

"Ask me something else," Vasir tried to contemporize. "Anything. The mission of the Compact—"

"—is too important. Yes. I know." The voice became even lower. "It would be a shame if the Council discovered what you and your fellow Spectres have been up to."

"That was a cheap shot," the Asari retorted coldly. "We're trying to stop a war here—"

"—and that would interfere with my business," was the unforgiving reply. "I want the target eliminated. I didn't say you can't interrogate her beforehand. But I want her killed. Fail to comply and there will be consequences." As there was no immediate acknowledgement, the voice demanded: "Do you understand?"

Vasir took a long while to answer. "Yes. I understand."

"Good."

Vakarian stopped the audio. "He compromised her," he noted unnecessarily.

"And she carried this for us to find in case we stopped her?"

Garrus bowed his head. "It's a dangerous thing to cross a Spectre." He dropped his voice dangerously. "Someone's going to find out first-hand."

Shepard nodded her agreement. "I'll leave this part to you, then. I'll go and check up on our guests."

"No, I should go too," Vakarian said quickly. "If the subject comes up, Jaenna should hear from me what… happened to her daughter. Plus, she's been my source for years."

"That makes sense." In another context, she would have been happy to leave that responsibility to him, but since Shilu'Vael had been under their joint command, Aaliyah felt it was her own business as well.

But first things came first. "Mercy," she keyed the AI, "place a call to Erinyes and scramble it through every cipher available. All operations under Tela Vasir's jurisdiction are to be frozen and all personnel affected are to be temporarily isolated until we can ascertain she has not compromised anyone else." She did not really like to deliver this alert digitally, not even through a quantum entanglement communicator —a device that, by its very design, was tamper-proof—, but the AI-managed ciphers at her disposal were so advanced that not even other AIs had been able to crack them without two months of continuous, uninterrupted work. Astounding things had been revealed to members of both sides of the Compact, but nothing had given her reason to think the Council had access to anything of the caliber required to tackle that cipher.

"Understood, colonel."

They went next to the cabin they had allocated to their guests. The door slid open immediately after the first call.

"Yes?" It was the younger one, Vasir's target.

"The name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, correct?" Shepard asked.

"Yes. Tali'Zorah is enough."

Garrus asked politely, "Is Jaenna alright?"

The girl nodded. "She just fell asleep. Don't worry, she has blocked the input on her suit—we can make all the noise we want and she won't hear a thing. It's been a hectic day for her."

"But not for you?"

"Well—I've been used to that for weeks already." She shifted her weight between her feet. "Not that I liked it. I haven't thanked you for getting us out of that mess."

"I couldn't ignore the call and live with it," Garrus admitted. "I've known Jaenna for years."

She walked back into her cabin and sat on her bunk bed. "Still, I think this is no courtesy visit. Have you come to collect?"

Shepard stared past the helmet and into her eyes. "You're smart. We heard you found something on your travels."

Tali'Zorah hesitated a little before replying. "Yes. I… I still don't know what gave me away. But this is what I found." She tapped her omni-tool a few times and forwarded the data over to both of them. "I believe you should know a few things before you try to make sense of that. I found this on the memory core of a Geth. Normally their data storage devices self-destruct on capture, but I managed to isolate this one almost intact. I had to do some conversion work to translate the data into a workable format, but I've sent you both the raw data and the processed files in case you want to do it yourselves later."

"It's appreciated. Mercy?"

"Yes, colonel?" the voice rang on the speakers for the Quarian's benefit.

"I have work for you. Process this and see if you can come up with anything she missed."

"I doubt it, Shepard. I'm not used to Geth ciphers. I'll try."

"I ask only for that. Thank you."

Tali'Zorah eyed her oddly. "Your data retrieval specialist?"

The Starwatch colonel decided to be blunt. "Mercy is our onboard AI."

As expected, Tali straightened up as if propelled by a spring: "A—a _what?!_ " She gasped. "Are you telling me that an _AI is conning this ship?!_ "

"Our resident pilot got injured during your rescue."

That deflated her. "Oh… well, I… I guess it's understandable, it's the Alliance gimmick after all," she stammered. "But… you really took a hell of a risk, going to a Citadel world with that aboard and all…"

"We accounted for it," Garrus pointed out. "Still you're correct. It could have gone wrong in any number of ways."

The data Tali'Zorah had obtained was a series of star charts, and logs which the Quarian had translated from the inintelligible Geth language into something readable…

"In the name of all gods…" Garrus breathed.

" _Holy SHIT!_ " Shepard reread the lines several times to make sure she was understanding correctly. " _Rachni eggs!?_ He found the egg of a _goddamned Rachni QUEEN?!_ "

Tali lowered her head and wrapped her arms around herself. "I'm sorry… I should have made this information available to you earlier, but…"

"But you understood that no one would care about you once you had given away your one bargaining chip. And you had all those mercs hot on your trail." If the Turian had been a human instead, his face would be flushed with a livid, burning, embarrassed red. She was absolutely right, of course. After centuries of having been reduced to vagrancy because of the mistake that had cost them their homeworld, Quarians shared the bottom of the pole with the vorcha and other dregs.

The girl's voice was nigh imperceptible. "Yes."

 _This also begs a question,_ Shepard realised. _Clearly this is what we need to stick it to that Saren bastard. And the Shadow Broker knew. If he was so interested in murdering this girl, then does it mean that… he's in league with Saren? Then why did he allow Vasir some wiggle room to question her?_

"It's not too late to act yet," she reassured Tali now. _We have urgent things to do now. That's for later to figure out._ "Furthermore, you've gotten this data to the people best suited to act on it. Come with us." She stood up: "Mercy, get me either Jondum Bau or Avitus Rix in Erinyes. Now. I'll take it in the briefing room."

"At once, colonel."

* * *

The Citadel - Council promenade

Donnel Udina had walked those halls many times, but he always had been escorted there by a team of Alliance marines. This time, instead, the people walking slightly ahead of him were two Spectres, and behind him followed their aides, which to onlookers was, at least, highly unusual. He noticed those glances. _Look! They finally caught the human plotting against us! Sure, you tell yourselves that,_ he thought wryly.

 _Just you all wait._

The Spectres keyed Avina: "Jondum Bau and Avitus Rix, requesting an immediate audience with the Council."

"Welcome to the Promenade!" the VI said with its characteristic empty cheerfulness. "The Council is currently holding a meeting behind closed doors and cannot be interrupted."

"Then record my words and pass them over verbatim to them," Bau growled: "The Spectres bring dire news and urgent matters that need to be dealt with straight away!"

"At once. Please stand by."

The undercurrent of whispering and conversations became even more subdued as those present noticed the rough tone on the Salarian's voice. Bau was reputed to be a smooth operator, and he could only behave in such fashion because the tidings he brought required the immediate attention he demanded.

Apparently the Councillors understood the same, because Avina gestured behind her and down the hallway: "The Council will receive you now. Please come in."

"Thanks."

Rix grunted with amusement. "That was effective."

Bau nodded his agreement sourly. He had been replaying what he would say over and over in his head. That Saren was toying with the kind of things that had almost consumed the galaxy was beyond his mind to put into words, but would the Councillors see it that way?

Behind both Spectres, Udina guardedly appraised the members of the supreme ruling body of the Citadel. As with the people who had seen them walk in, that he was being escorted there by Bau and Rix came to them as noteworthy, but that was all they let on.

"We understand you bring urgent news," the Salarian councillor began. "We're listening. What demands our attention?"

Rix stepped forward. "Saren Arterius has gone rogue," he announced. _We've wasted enough time beating around the bush._ "We have conclusive and incontrovertible evidence attesting to that. He is consorting with enemies of the Citadel and has the plans and the means to again unleash a catastrophe that almost consumed our galaxy once."

He then gestured at Udina. "Our diplomatic mission to the Geth yielded troubling news," the human chargé d'affaires detailed. At once all murmuring died. "Saren was among them, aboard the same vessel he used to lay waste to Elysium. We do not know how he achieved it, but there has been a schism on the Geth collective. A sizable number of them are now his to command." He paused for an instant and looked around him: the silence was thundering, and there were pale faces everywhere. "We were able to confirm this recently, through the joint efforts of Alliance and Citadel operatives, when we rescued a young Quarian girl who stole information from the Geth. The data she provided shows that Saren has come into possession of an ancient Rachni vessel carrying multiple queen eggs." This time the silence was shattered by exclamations of shock.

"Would those present please hold your comments!" the Turian councillor boomed. The stern request had the desired effect. Then he glared stonily at Udina: "We are used to hearing outrageous tales from you, but this one is almost offensively so. A joint operation between Alliance and Citadel personnel? In what kind of universe those things take place, mister Udina?"

"We authorized it." Bau's interruption again caused all whispering to cease. "Nihlus Kryik, Tela Vasir, Avitus Rix, Gavius Surrakar, Shilyna T'Perro and myself."

"Kryik and Vasir were severely injured during the rescue of the Quarian who provided confirmation of Saren's treachery," Rix informed. "They are being treated as we speak."

The Spectres had managed something seldom before seen. They had forced the Council into a stunned silence.

After a few instants spent to apprehend what they were being told, Melara the Asari councillor spoke: "Your actions could be misconstrued as colluding with parties hostile to the Citadel, mister Bau."

"Yes, they could be seen that way," the Salarian agreed, "but those of all six of us? It's no secret that miss T'Perro and I are at odds on many things, and yet she gave her support. I should note she joined in on the condition that she would get to monitor all of our actions and would have unlimited power to report our operations to you if we ever acted against Citadel interests."

The councillors and the Spectres exchanged glares. Linron, the Salarian representative, asked slowly: "Do we want to know what kind of Citadel secrets or assets have you exposed to the Alliance in this fashion?"

Udina and Rix —to the surprise of the first— both clenched their fists at that.

"Your line of discourse invites us to believe this Council is too fixated on the Alliance and ignoring a threat much more immediate—"

"One of us has turned _rogue!"_ Rix stormed, interrupting the diplomat. "Saren is plotting to unleash horrors we should know all too well, and we are being questioned about sources and methods! Each minute we spend here chasing ghosts is one more minute we allow him to develop his plans! Nihlus, the most decorated of us, almost got himself killed confirming this. His sacrifice deserves more from you than doubting our loyalties!"

"Avitus, don't forget yourself," Melara snapped severely. "You will understand that the relations between the Citadel and the Alliance are at their lowest point since the First Contact War. This cannot be disregarded, however dangerous the actions of a rogue Spectre could be."

"Our relations are at their lowest point in no small part because of your antagonistic attitude, councillor," Udina shot back. "Ambassador Goyle presented you with evidence of Saren's crimes mere hours after the disaster on Elysium, evidence you either ignored or outright strove to subvert. But now it is your own elite agents who bring forth confirmation of our previous assertions." He paused for effect. "I can understand that you would seek weak points in my words and ways to dismiss my arguments, in light of our less than amicable relationship. But you would do your citizens an ill service if you did the same with people sworn to protect their interests."

"You always were very good at wordplay, mister Udina, but policy is not built on witty retorts," Linron pointed out coldly. "It should go without saying that the fact that this 'evidence' was obtained as a result of a 'joint operation' taints it. Would you take it at face value were our roles reversed? Still, we cannot ignore the fact that not a small number of Spectres stand by it, but if it turns out to be true, that Saren has turned to them proves that synthetics will always pose a threat to the rest of the galaxy. Whether they are omnics or Geth."

"The Geth would have remained on the Perseus Veil if only Saren would have let them be. As your agent Avitus Rix posits, every minute spent dawdling and arguing favors him. Neither humans nor omnics are your enemy, councillors! Here, we bring proof of that. We are prepared to exculpate the Council from any responsibility on the Elysium raid. Saren probably co-opted Hierarchy personnel to plant false flags, and was very successful at that, but his ultimate goal was another."

"And only now you tell us? You could have started from there," Paratus the Turian quipped. "Still, that's good news. Would you care to enlighten us?"

"Saren was after a Prothean relic we unearthed during the foundation of a new colony. The relic was moved for security reasons to the Starwatch installation on Elysium. Somehow Saren learned of this.

"The artifact was destroyed during the attack, but with the assistance of Dr. Liara T'Soni we managed to reconstruct the information it contained. She has prepared a report for your perusal on the matter, but I can summarize the important bits for you."

"As I recall, Dr. T'Soni was conducting excavations in one of your colonies," Melara observed.

"That is correct. As a matter of fact," Bau pointed out, "a mixed team of Alliance and Citadel personnel dispatched to recruit her had to fend off an attack on part of Krogan mercenaries enlisted in the Blood Pack. Prior to this we had received information that her mother, Matriarch Benezia, had interest in forcibly extracting her from Alliance space, but as events unfolded it became clear that she wanted to deprive us of her aid." _And how did she know her daughter could be of use to us?_ he asked himself. _She could not have known unless she had sources inside the Compact… Vasir can't possibly have been her mole too._

"And you believe she would have arranged for that by placing a bounty on her own daughter's head?" Paratus stopped just short of scoffing at the idea. "That's callous."

"Callous or not, the data we got says that's what she did," Rix replied dryly.

"It would be useful to corroborate whether that's the case," Melara suggested. "Udina, later we will examine T'Soni's report, but right now I'm interested in hearing your summary of it."

A nod. "The Protheans left several devices like this one scattered across the galaxy, all containing the same message. It was a warning against an invasion. Those of you versed on them know that their sudden disappearance while at the zenith of their power is an enigma that has puzzled archaeologists for centuries, and this message is the answer to that enigma.

"The Protheans and their vassal states were annihilated by extragalactic invaders they called the Reapers, invaders that cull the sentient races of the whole galaxy every 50,000 years — and their ships were identical to the vessel used by Saren to attack our colony.

"With that being said," Udina stated with finality, "if the message of the Protheans can be believed, there is only one logical explanation for his actions. Saren is now in the service of those invaders, is laying the groundwork for their next round of culling, and is actively seeking to keep everyone in the dark about this."

* * *

 _Girls' Night Out_

When Tracer awoke, two people were waiting in the med bay next to her:

"Welcome back, Lena," Anika smiled warmly.

"Doctor… doctor Ziegler? Shepard?"

"I'm happy to have you back, girl. How are you?" _To hell with rank and stuff._

The Overwatch legend looked at both women, then her eyes stared idly at the ceiling again. "How am I…? Alive, I guess. What happened to me?"

"It was a bomb," Aaliyah replied. "Apparently it went off right next to Nihlus. He's made of stern stuff: he made it, by the skin of his teeth, but he made it. You had major internal injuries yourself. The doc worked like a demon to patch you up."

There was no mark on Lena of all the work Anika had done on her, not even a pallor on her face; her skin and muscles were as supple and vigorous as ever.

Ziegler beamed. "Don't mention it. Anything for you, Lena."

"You owe her a drink or some cake," Shepard commented with a grin.

Tracer was not that far gone that she did not find their concern touching. "Alright. What will it be? Would some lemon pie do? Or some Rosy Lee with scones?"

Anika giggled, relieved and happy to see her friend healthy and in high spirits. "I'll accept a serving of lemon pie and a tea."

"When we get to Erinyes I'll bake you some pie myself. As for the tea, well… be grateful auntie Lena has a private reserve. Otherwise…" She wrinkled her nose. "Otherwise you'd have to put up with that watered down brew they serve on the mess hall. Can I get some decent clothes on? I hate this gown."

"By all means. Your flight suit and jacket are in the locker," Ziegler pointed. "Your chronal core was damaged, but that's what we got spares for. We'll see to it at home."

Tracer got off the bed and gave Anika her best smile. "What would I do without you."

The Swiss returned the smile. "We'll be outside. Take your time."

Lena locked herself inside the small bathroom. Then Shepard's earphone buzzed. "Yes?"

"How is she?" It was Reyes.

Aaliyah blinked in surprise. "In a good mood," she replied slowly. She harbored almost no appreciation for the man, and what little she had had come from cold, dispassionate acknowledgment of his unique skills —and his astonishingly lethal application of said skills— and reluctant reflections on everything he had done since that fatidical first encounter on the Cabeus crater. The disagreeable conclusion had been that he deserved at least some credit and thanks. But that did not imply she had to accord him any degree of sympathy.

Gabriel himself knew this, and also knew that even if his interest in Lena's health was genuine, whatever kind of respect there could have once been between them had been irretrievably soured by his many, many, _many_ screw-ups. To name one, not once, but _twice_ had he been responsible for the disbanding of Overwatch. Lena Oxton, loyal to a fault to the principles espoused by the agency he had once led, would never forget that betrayal.

He briefly wondered why he had bothered to ask. Then he recalled what he himself had told Shepard: vengeance was a cruel mistress, but memory was an even harsher judge.

"Good." And that was it.

Anika noticed her expression. "What was that about?"

"Reyes… asked how Lena was."

The women stared at each other in confusion for a few seconds.

"What would he gain out of it?" Ziegler pondered.

"I'm asking myself the same," Aaliyah replied in doubt, in part wanting to conceal a thought. She had glimpsed Reyes' torment, and her own reaction had angered her.

 _But who else could I tell about this?_

"Look," she spoke reluctantly, "I think… I think he's seeking redemption, in his own way. And I hate myself for believing it."

Tracer then walked out of the bathroom, fully dressed. "What is it that you hate yourself for believing?"

Shepard swore to herself. "I have reason to think Reyes wants to ditch the Reaper act."

Lena gave her an odd glance. "Once I would've said that if he wanted 'redemption' I'd be happy to oblige, but now…" Her face became empty. "Now I don't care either way. Good luck with that, says I. If anything, good news for us. Less bodies to explain away."

Both Anika and the Starwatch colonel were baffled by that, but only briefly. There was spirit in Tracer yet, but she was still jaded.

"How did it turn out? I hope spending… how long was I out?"

"Two days," Anika answered. "Yes, the mission was successful, but we had two more casualties, Nihlus and Vasir." Carefully she withheld the role —they believed— the Asari had played on her injury.

"There is no such thing as light casualties in my book, but I'd say what we got was worth the price." Shepard quickly related what she had learned from Tali'Zorah, again withholding Vasir's deeds. She wanted to interrogate the Spectre before revealing that.

Again, Lena's reaction was rather subdued. "It's the full monty alright," was her only colorful comment. "So what happens now? We go to the ivory tower and hope the guvners get their act together?"

"Bau and Rix should be presenting our findings to their bosses… right about now. So for the time being we get to Erinyes ASAP. Hopefully we'll have news before then."

Tracer shrugged. "Okay… since it's time to kick our heels, then might as well grab some coffee. Hope you blokes haven't seized the opportunity to raid my reserve."

Aaliyah laughed heartily at that. "Nobody here would dare."

They made their way to the mess hall. There were two clocks on the wall, one of them set on the Greenwich Meridian Time, and the other on the Galactic Standard Time. The first read 10:37 AM. Astrid and Zaeed were there on separate tables. Both noticed the women as they walked in:

"Shepard!" the mercenary hollered. "Can I get a minute of your valuable time?"

The edge on Massani's voice did not escape the Starwatch colonel. She gestured Anika and Lena to join Martinsson on her table, then took a seat in front of the mercenary.

"Sorry to intrude," Zaeed said almost maliciously in a tone that belied his words. "You plan on holding on to me for much longer?"

"Honestly," she admitted uneasily, "I don't know. If everything pans out, not for long."

"And that depends on what?"

Her first impulse was to say he was not cleared for that, but on second thought, she decided she could tell him that much: "The Council ruling in our favor so we can operate openly."

The man did not laugh, staring at her for some long instants instead. "If that's what you're waiting for, I hope you can pay for all that time."

She returned that stare with a smirk. "I have some spare change."

"You're very confident." His glare softened and became slightly curious: "I'd like to know what's it that you're gambling on, but that's beyond my pay grade, of course. So instead I'm going to liven up your day some. Here, read this."

That intrigued Shepard. Someone had sent Zaeed a message asking explicitly for her, by name.

She was being invited to a meeting on the Citadel itself.

"You know who sent this?"

Again the malicious glint. "I could."

Aaliyah was not impressed. "Consider it buying goodwill. I heard you have beef with the Blue Suns boss, right? Who knows, if things go our way, we could help."

Massani let out a brief, hoarse laugh. "Nice try, girl. Goodwill doesn't pay for supplies."

"No, you're right. It gets them for free sometimes." She looked at the message again. _Why is the meeting supposed to take place on the Citadel? I need a diplomatic placet from the Council to even set foot in that place._ Wheels turned in her head for a few moments, then: "Either someone made a gross mistake, or that someone is better informed than we are."

"What can I say? You pays your money and you takes your chance."

She replayed the events of the past few days on her head. If the Shadow Broker was as well connected as she had been led to believe, then she could assume it was already known to him or her that a highly placed asset had failed her assignment and was quite likely in custody of someone who could threaten his or her operations.

 _And it would be in the best interests of the Broker to neutralize that threat. To that end, a meeting would have to be, um, brokered. By the Broker itself? No, probably an intermediary. And someone so connected wouldn't make so glaring a mistake of suggesting a place where I'm not allowed._

 _I'm making too many assumptions._ She tapped her omni-tool. "Mercy, I want Garrus and Lawson on the briefing room."

"Yes, Shepard."

"Astrid!" she hollered next. "Come on, there's business."

Anika and Lena turned their heads around. "You need us, luv?" Tracer asked.

"Not right now. If this develops into something I'll tell you. You catch your breath." Then she stood up and looked at Zaeed. "Come with me."

When Massani, Martinsson and Shepard entered the circular room, Miranda and Vakarian were already there. She gave them both a polite nod. "Something came up. Zaeed here got a message for me."

She had expected the sinuous Lawson to speak out first, but Astrid surprised her: "Why not reach you out directly?"

"I can think of several possibilities," she answered. "One, whoever they are, they don't know how to contact me. Two, they are sending another message in this fashion: they know Massani is temporarily working for me, and they know he's with me." She looked at each of them in the face: "If this unknown party was your agency—" she fixated her eyes on Miranda "—I find it hard to believe that they couldn't reach me without intermediaries. So I'm going for the second one."

Garrus agreed with a nod. "I wouldn't say nobody noticed our last adventure."

Miranda also agreed. "Your logic seems solid. What did the message say?"

"I'm being invited to a meetup on the Citadel."

Martinsson blinked. "You'd need clearance from the Council for that."

"My thought, exactly," Shepard concurred. "But I highly doubt it's an official meeting. I surmised this someone knows it, and the fact that I'm being invited there is another message in itself: this someone is connected enough that knows which way the Council will lean. Zaeed here—" she glanced at him "—has some indication about who could it be."

"The Broker has a few agents we know of on the Citadel," Garrus pondered. "He or she knows we're onto a few of those, and uses them as a way of exchanging messages with us when there's business to be had. A Volus specialized on financial services openly operates on his or her behalf. He goes by the name of Barla Von."

That earned him a stony glare from Massani. Shepard noticed it. _Too late, Zaeed._ She looked next at Miranda again: "Anything else your… people would know on this?"

She shook her head. "Nothing Vakarian hasn't already said. The Broker is remarkably circumspect on its dealings."

"Does the message say where you're supposed to meet?" Garrus asked.

"Yeah, the Silver Coast Casino."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ kudos to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for asking the right questions and making the right comments to keep me writing.


	26. Citadel: Acceptance

The Citadel

Shepard had already glimpsed the monstrous bulk of the station through the gas clouds, but when they finally broke into open space and were able to behold it in all its intimidating majesty, she was struck speechless.

"My… God…" Astrid breathed next to her. "I had heard it was big… but I never imagined it was this big."

Aaliyah could not speak. _Arcturus station would be a flyspeck next to it. How many people live here? Ten million, fifteen million?_

"Holy shit, that's the Destiny Ascension," Martinsson pointed. "She's one huge bitch…"

"Lucky thing we never had to trade shots with that," Amari noted sourly.

"If you ever got to 'trade shots with that', the captain would be relieved from duty and subjected to a military tribunal for incompetence," Valena pointed out. "With a skilled officer at the helm, you would never get close enough for a first salvo."

"They probably wouldn't try," Garrus speculated as he played the odds in his head. "That monster would trounce any ship in your navy—actually, any ship in any navy, for that matter," he explained absent-mindedly, "but she would be stung to death by your strike craft."

"I would have thought you blokes would have found a way around that," Tracer observed.

Danaan slowly shook her head. "Not to my knowledge."

That did not ease Shepard much. The Asari flagship dwarfed anything else nearby almost to an obscene degree, in the same fashion the Citadel dwarfed any kind of deep space installation the Alliance had ever constructed. _And we stood up to this? We are out of our damn minds._

She found her voice. "We will never know," she said quietly. "That battleship will never be an enemy now."

Genji bowed his head. _"Wareware wa kounnara, tabun kesshite okorimasen."_

Garrus needed a second for his translator to process the strange language, then also nodded. "Yes. With a bit of luck, it will never happen."

Back when Shepard had been a fresh cadet, everything she had seen after boarding the shuttle that would take her to officer school had had a novelty feel to it. In a sense, the thirty minutes that followed were similar, but the impact was much greater. This was no border world like Illium. The Citadel was the Rome of this era, a grand, spaceborne city where civilizations from all over the galaxy met. Everything about the place was _vast_. Each of the five arms, the ring that linked them all, the docking bays for the near-infinite ships coming and going all the time.

She knew she should not have felt like that. She herself was important, one of the artificers of the Compact's success, and her efforts had not only served Starwatch and the Alliance, but the races of the Citadel as well. But, as the outer airlock opened and she set foot on the metal walkway, she looked around herself again and she could not help it.

She felt tiny.

David Anderson and Donnel Udina, escorted by half a dozen marines —armed marines at that— were waiting a few steps away from their ship.

"Hello, everyone," the dark-skinned officer greeted them, not with a salute, but with a simple gesture of his hand. "Welcome to the Citadel."

"It's a pleasure to see you again, colonel." Udina stepped forward to shake Shepard's hand with a thin smile that lent his stony face some much needed humanity, and that probably was even sincere.

"Thank you, Mr. Udina."

He shook Valena Danaan's and Garrus Vakarian's hands next. "Glad to make your acquaintance. The Spectres and colonel Anderson here allowed me to read your after-action reports. Damn fine jobs, all of you."

"We did what we had to do," Garrus replied. "We make a fine team. We all pitched in."

Udina's thin grin widened. "'Pitched in'? Please don't be offended, but I did not expect you would know English."

"No offense taken. Translators are fine, but I prefer to hear the undigested version myself. I miss less that way."

"A sensible, sensible precaution. It does you credit. Avitus Rix speaks highly of you."

He nodded slightly in thanks. "What happens next?"

"Now the Council interviews all of you," Anderson answered. "It's mostly for show. Bau and Rix were grilled at length, but they got through to them. For now, we have civilian access to Citadel space, but a broader clearance is being negotiated."

The Asari blinked. "That was some heavy lifting Bau and Rix did," she noted, borrowing from English slang herself.

Udina did not miss Danaan's skill either. "That they did. Paratus gave us a hard time. We owe a lot to this Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Without the data she gave you this wouldn't have happened." He slightly frowned. "They found Dr. T'Soni's report harder to digest. Both Paratus and Linron questioned the way her information was obtained, and accepted it only after Melara backed her. Very reluctantly, but they accepted it."

Shepard did not blush, despite being very aware of the glances she was getting. "Of course they would object. It figures that only Melara would support her."

"We still are going to need more evidence about who Saren is working for," the diplomat cautioned. "The Spectres have been directed to contain the Geth and Rachni threats and to apprehend Saren, but no order was given to deal with the so-called Reapers."

* * *

There had been no official announcement yet, but the rapprochement between the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council had transpired, as had the critical role played by cadres of operatives on both sides to make that rapprochement possible. The crowd that had gathered on the hall adjacent to the docking bays told Shepard how quickly the news had spread. There were all kinds of looks, mostly curious, but a more than a few hard stares. There were also people vociferously asking for statements and taking pictures; journalism was not a profession exclusive to humans, though here they did not struggle against a line of security personnel barely able to hold them back. Instead, they scrupulously kept their distance of two paces from the local police force, arrayed to make sure the arrival of the Compact on the Citadel was as orderly an affair as possible.

They left the hall and the crowd of reporters and police behind them, and once again the sheer size of the place assaulted Shepard. A cyclopean megalopolis unfolded before her eyes, skyscrapers and all, stretching out for miles, the tiny lights of hovercars everywhere streaking about. Aaliyah realized she had been wrong. It was not Rome. It was the Thebes of ancient Egypt, a city that had not only been the center of the world, but also heads, shoulders and maybe even waist above every other city of its time.

She had already been shocked numb, but the splendor of the Presidium still managed to jolt her anew. Anderson and Udina led the Compact crew into the diplomatic district, and thence, via elevators, to the Council rotunda. The place was also packed full with diplomats and officers of all militaries, Hackett and Morrison among them. Some journalists were also present but in much smaller numbers. These were surely well connected, as there was no police to hold them back, but for the moment they handled themselves quietly, taking pictures and speaking before their hovering cameras.

The Starwatch colonel noticed the rigid faces and hard looks that followed Lacroix and Reyes as they walked by. She know bringing them along would cause a stir, but she had already made up her mind about the issue, even if she did not like it herself. That she could live with. If others did not like it either, then to hell with them.

The main Council hall was like everything else she had seen up to that point: breathtaking. They had a rather unorthodox way of making people keep their distance, she noted upon seeing the rails on the balcony at the end of the walkway. The boxes on both sides were also packed tight.

A hush descended on the place as the Councillors made their appearance and took place behind their lecterns.

"Members of Starwatch, we bid you welcome to the Citadel," the Asari councillor greeted them. "We have studied the report the Spectres brought to us. We have requested your presence here to communicate our decisions to you in person."

The Salarian councillor spoke next: "As of yesterday, all the privileges, permissions and clearances of the Spectre Saren Arterius are revoked, and he is officially declared rogue and an enemy of the Citadel."

"We were less than pleased to learn that a significant number of our agents worked clandestinely with you," her Turian counterpart added coolly, "but results cannot be argued with. You have rendered the Citadel a valuable service."

"The Compact is from now on recognized as an interservice initiative with our backing, on the terms it was originally conceived by their founders," Melara announced, and the murmuring started again. "Their Alliance members are heretofore granted permission to operate on Citadel space. While deployed alongside Spectres or their designated adjutants, they are to be accorded their same clearances and privileges. They are otherwise to be treated as standard Citadel citizens until arrangements to allow them to operate independently can be made."

"This in no way implies yielding to the Alliance point of view on the multitude of issues we disagree on," Paratus pointed out. "Synthetics, androids and all manner of artificial intelligences of Alliance design will under no circumstances operate without supervision from specially appointed Citadel personnel while on Citadel space."

"The Council's stance on AI remains the same as it was," Linron stated. "The fate of the Quarians ought to be a grim reminder of the dangers posed by the reckless development of synthetic intelligence."

"We honor the courage and sacrifices of those who have risked their lives to expose Saren's betrayal," Melara said next. "Appointments will be made in the following days to temporarily replace Nihlus Kryik and Tela Vasir as our representatives on the Compact."

"You are given our full permission and backing to track down Saren Arterius and put a stop to his plans, whatever they may be. We also acknowledge the Alliance's request to extradite him should he be apprehended alive, and hereby give our solemn commitment to come up with a proposal to bring him to justice that is mutually acceptable for both parties," Linron followed.

"Last, but not least, a word of gratitude." Melara looked at all the members of the Compact one by one. "You have exposed a plot that, if successful, would have caused war to break out between our nations. There is no telling the number of lives you have helped save. Any development regarding the Alliance will be from now on considered in light of this tremendous service you have rendered us."

"Enjoy your welcome to the Citadel," Linron said with finality.

"And continue to perform in such fashion," Paratus seconded him. "This meeting is adjourned."

The chaos that had been kept in check by the expectations about the Council's ruling exploded, some voices lauding it loudly, some opposing it vociferously, everyone jabbering and yelling.

But Shepard simply turned around and looked at Anderson with a smile. "We did it, skipper."

* * *

To the Council, it had been a matter of saving face and limiting the political damage caused by months of ignoring requests that had been proven well founded by their own elite agents, reason for which the small reception organized to celebrate the Compact's recognition was not being held in one of the many halls of the rotunda, but on a specially allocated auditorium on the diplomatic district.

Shepard thought the whole 'yay, the Council says it's all cool, let's throw a party' idea was a total waste of time, and she would have preferred to go back to their ship and start Saren's hunt in earnest. Ironically, the councillors also wished the gathering did not take place, that being one of the reasons Udina had insisted on it: while they were not going to twist the knife in the wound, letting them get off scot-free would only make it more likely that they again behaved obstructively, and nobody wanted that.

Journalists hounded them on every step of the way, with the Citadel police keeping them at a distance, but there was no dodging the media crew waiting for them right inside the auditorium:

"Colonel Shepard, Khalisah al-Jilani, Westerlund News," one woman introduced herself, her cameraman and hovercam behind her. "Would you please answer a few questions?"

She exchanged a glance with Anderson and turned towards her with a good-humored grumble. "Just keep it brief. This is no place for a conference."

"I will, ma'am." The bright lights on the hovercam turned on. "A momentous day for the Alliance, ma'am. What does the recognition of the Compact mean for omnic rights?"

The question almost caught her off-guard. "What could it mean? I don't see how this could change the Alliance's stance on that. Two of my agents are omnics themselves, and they performed courageously."

"A lot of people will be shocked to see Reaper and Widowmaker standing next to elite Alliance agents. Have they been granted pardons?"

"Both are working for us on a probationary basis," she answered uneasily.

"And you are alright with that?"

"I'm a military officer, miss al-Jilani. I seldom have to deal with matters I like."

"Even if Reaper was responsible for murdering your squad back in the Cabeus crater?"

 _How the FUCK did she learn of that?_ She kept control of herself, but her eyes seared the journalist. "More than anyone I refuse to see that the deaths of my soldiers go unavenged. I deal with that every waking moment, as I had to deal with Saren's plot to instigate a conflict between the Alliance and the Citadel. I was given assets with the expectation that I would deploy them wisely to accomplish that mission, and that's what I did."

"Some could see that as condoning their actions—"

"Their problem," she cut her sharply. "Public opinion is the least of my concerns. I'm more concerned with people still existing to give their opinions in the first place. Don't you dare tell me how to do my job." _Idiot._

"Even if that implies protecting a terrorist?"

Shepard was almost overwhelmed by the urge to choke the journalist, but she held onto her temper. "If it makes you feel better, I have asked myself questions along those lines every day. My superiors gave both Talon agents to me for custody or deployment. We are front-line operatives, not wardens, so I decided to deploy them. I strongly wish that was not the case, but he has made a difference, perhaps a critical one. If you have a better idea for that man to make reparations for his crimes, then by all means, let's hear it."

The reporter tried to hold Aaliyah's ruthlessly cold stare, but she could not. "I'm—I'm sorry, colonel, not my line of work."

"Exactly. Not your line of work. So if you will be so kind, leave those matters to those who know about it." Shepard walked away without further word. _JOURNALISTS!_

"You'll have to get used to that," Anderson said carefully.

"Not today," she muttered through her teeth. "The moment I learn who spilled the beans…" She turned her head around to see al-Jilani quailing under Reyes' glare. The rest of the Compact agents gave her similarly unfriendly looks.

The atmosphere was cordial, but subdued and sober. Alliance and Citadel officers and personnel mingled freely now. Among those there were a few dressed in the white and yellow ceremonial uniforms of Overwatch:

"Colonel Shepard," an old man with a wicked scar over his forehead and right eye socket stepped forward to meet her.

"Commander Morrison, sir," she saluted with no small pleasure. "I'm glad to see you again, sir."

He returned the salute. "I can say the same, ma'am. You've certainly been busy enough." He coldly regarded the former Talon operatives, now standing aside from the rest along with Miranda Lawson, then looked back at Shepard. "I guess you weren't all smiles, having him on board."

Aaliyah gave him a wry look. "Sir, when I was a fresh nugget, they never told me I was supposed to like orders, just that I was supposed to follow them."

"You were ordered to work with him." The question was delivered flatly.

"Why, yes, sir, but I could have locked him up and forgotten about it instead." The following did not come out easily: "And we wouldn't be here now."

The former Overwatch commander noticed how reluctantly she had spoken and decided to let the matter rest. Shepard had had to swallow her pride and go against her wishes to get the best out of the assets available to her. That the Compact had turned out to be such a smashing success did not mean she had had it easy.

"That's the kind of choices you've got to make when you're in charge, colonel. You close your eyes, commit yourself, and hope you're doing the right thing."

"I hear that, sir," she replied, glad to see that, in spite of the obvious, he understood.

Tracer and Genji approached next. "Oi there, boss," she greeted him.

"Hello, commander," Genji imitated her. "I see you've already gotten acquainted with our fellow agents."

Morrison grunted. "Yeah, that's about right." He glanced about aimlessly. He wanted to ask what was Shepard's next move, but the Citadel was not their home turf. However thorough the sweeping work, they would always be at a disadvantage there…

 _But what the hell, this joker's on everyone's list right now._ "So, colonel, what's your next move going to be?"

She briefly glanced at the other two Overwatch legends. Not one muscle on Lena's face twitched, and Genji being almost one hundred percent synth meant he had even better control.

"After we're done with this bullshit… call me a liar, but I'm going to see the sights. I've heard a lot of tales about this place, I want to see what's true," she said as nonchalantly as she could. They all caught the message: she had business there, and she could not discuss it. "Astrid's gonna make sure I don't miss anything worth seeing."

Shimada grinned in amusement. "A real girls' night out?"

* * *

Aaliyah spent the rest of the gathering getting to know officers from the armed forces of the Citadel races and her counterparts on the Compact she had still to meet. Gavius Surrakar was a mystery of sorts; the Turian had courteously shaken hands with her and congratulated her for her work, inquired about Nihlus' health, obliquely asked about her input regarding Vasir's situation, then excused himself and went his way.

"First time I see this Surrakar," she commented offhandedly to Garrus.

Her Turian counterpart grunted his agreement at her unspoken observation. "There isn't much on him. He got appointed as a Spectre after some operations against Terminus corsairs and gunrunners, and that's all I know. Nobody knows what he's up to."

Morrison mused, "If that character was on our side I'd say he's internal affairs."

"We don't have those," Vakarian answered uneasily. "The Spectres are too few for that. We're good at keeping tabs on each other. Hell, we are proof of that."

"And yet you know only the most superficial things about him," she pointed out.

"I know," he admitted to even greater discomfort.

Shilyna T'Perro was as fiery and rash as Surrakar was not. She was ancient, the most veteran of all Asari commandos, an anointed master of no less than eight different Justicar shrines. She had focused her darts on Reyes of all people: in her own words, those calling the shots in Starwatch had to be insane if they were going to trust a genocidal maniac who had next to no qualms about killing in cold blood for no reason. The one thing that had earned her Aaliyah's grudging respect was that she apparently had bothered studying Alliance history in depth, as she had said that if he had still opposed synthetics as tenaciously as he had during both Omnic crisis then he would have been worthy of respect.

T'Perro had to know of Shepard's enmity with Reyes. Months ago, she would have agreed with her word by word, but now she could not, even if the Asari's barbs were dead accurate. Martinsson's comment came to mind: everyone would think she was actually excusing him, but almost no one knew all the facts. She could not reveal those, either.

Not that she would actually tell this biotic bitch anything. Reyes might be Reaper, and she might not like him one bit, but he was _their_ Reaper, and damned if she was going to let someone talk shit about one of her men.

And that reflection actually decided her on something she had been seeking excuses not to do. If she had to take heat for it, then to hell with it. She made her way to a lectern set atop a small platform where several important people had already given their speeches that day, opened the mic, and asked:

"May I have a moment of your attention, please?"

The conversation on the small hall died and everyone turned to look at Shepard. She was no stranger to this, having handled numberless briefings, but this time it felt awkward.

"This is not what I had in mind, really," she said frankly. "But it was necessary. Good thing mister Udina talked me into it. Saren is out there somewhere, and I dread to think what he's up to, but what we accomplished here is important and it merits recognition.

"The Compact was a mess. There was no protocol; the only thing we had to start with was trust, and not a lot of that. But it was enough. Both the Citadel Council and Prime Minister Shastri have officially recognised us. Now we need not worrying about being exposed by either side.

"More importantly, we have accomplished what the Compact had set out to do. Fundamental disagreements remain between us, but our nations will not go to war for the foreseeable future. I don't need to tell you how big that is.

"All of you played critical roles. Anika, Lena, Layali, Park, Genji, Astrid, Garrus, Valena, Nihlus, Wrex, Dr. T'Soni, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, and all of the crew who worked with us. You made this happen.

"But we would have failed without the help of some others. Miranda Lawson, for one, but no one here has beef with her. We didn't trust her, and still there's too much about her that we don't know, and we don't like that, but she still did well.

"You all know I have every reason to outright hate Gabriel Reyes. And both Lena and Genji here had to suffer through the meltdown of Overwatch, and everything that came after that because of things he did. And because of things Amélie Lacroix did.

"Even so, I believe they deserve our thanks. The good doesn't wash out the bad. But they also made this happen.

"It is my personal belief that much of the pain and grief humans and omnics have lived through could have been avoided if the efforts and sacrifices of some had not gone unnoticed. I will not make that mistake.

"I know I'm one of the leading officers here, but I won't ask you to follow my lead now. How I feel about them doesn't change the fact that they did fine. I cannot ask you to say the same if you don't think the same as well."

She stared at Gabriel and raised her glass.

Then, slowly, one by one, the rest of the Compact personnel imitated her.

"To us, then," Shepard toasted. "I will toast to Zarya's memory when we have nailed Saren."

* * *

Being cleared to enter the Citadel had presented one of the Compact agents with an opportunity to blend in. This place was chock-full of people that did not know who she was or what she was, a place where this agent was a nobody, neither Amélie Lacroix nor Widowmaker.

And she had seized it. Official membership on her agency accorded her the freedom to go pretty much anywhere there, and so she had walked the streets for hours, sometimes cloaked, but most of the time not.

And all the while her mind wandered.

She was a nobody there, but so was everyone there to her.

Even if the millions of aliens inhabiting that colossal space station had lives not unlike those of her fellow humans, she did not relate to them. Instead, her brain, eyes, and the VI she had been outfitted with treated them all as potential targets: species, gender, height, weight, handedness, weapons.

Shepard's gesture had, after a fashion, cleansed part of the stigma attached to the sniper. She had committed horrible atrocities, and had the most successful combat record of any Talon operative against Overwatch. As Aaliyah had said, the good did not wash out the bad.

But, in spite of all that, she had been _thanked_ for her efforts.

And the Compact had recognized her as one of their own.

That had reawakened in her something that had long lain dormant.

Gratitude.

And yet, she could not act on it.

Gabriel had not shown anything. Two decades roaming the galaxy had wrought some changes on him, but, even if Sombra was correct and he was nothing but self-aware gray goo, deep down he remained a bitter man, one who had sacrificed much for no reward, and she was certain Shepard's honest praise —compounded by her frank admission of her dislike for him— had effected yet another change on Reyes.

Now he would go through fire to prove himself worthy of those words.

She also knew she should have felt the same. Amélie would be out of herself with joy, tears streaming and all. But she did not feel anything.

To her, it just meant that she had less constraints to perform her role. She was thinking of her new situation in operational terms, not personal ones.

 _What am I?_

She stopped walking, and looked around herself. She was standing in the middle of a street on a commercial district. In front of her, two Krogan — males, fit, young adults, lightly armored, customized Carnifex pistols on hip holsters — stood next to a dark pool, loudly discussing whether there would be fish in there. To her right, a bunch of patrons — Drell, Asari, Turians and Salarians, fashionably dressed, no weapons except for a light Haliat Armory piece on a Turian — clustered around the main gate of some pub or another. Loud dance music flooding out into the street — a track by DJ Splicer, an Asari 'sound sculptor'. To her left, there was a kiosk, a Salarian salesman — male, late teens, no arms visible, delicate limbs so no combat experience — offering subscriptions into an alternate reality video game, two Asari promoting it — both very fit and dressed in skimpy outfits, one in her late teen years, the other slightly older and probably some sort of covert operative, given how she had returned her scanning glance with equal dispassion.

The tender, soft, horribly shellshocked Amélie was slightly more than a fragmentary nuisance, one that sometimes — and at the worst possible moments — managed to assert control over the cold, ruthless Widowmaker. But now Widowmaker wanted Amélie to take the reins, and she could not make it happen. She could not switch back into her. She could not simply enter the club, ask the barman to enlighten her about what kind of drinks she could have, and allow herself to be charmed by one of the locals.

The magnitude of what Talon had done to her once again became apparent. They had stripped away her ability to feel most things, and left behind pitifully little for her to work with.

"Feeling lost?"

She turned around.

"Tracer."

The British girl stared into the yellow eyes. She saw the assassin's cool features shift almost imperceptibly for an instant, but the woman reverted to the same glazed look. Many times since she had first seen her again had she been transported back in time, to that horrible night in King's Row. The Widowmaker she had battled then had been outright inhuman, and the one standing in front of her also was inhuman, but in a decidedly different fashion.

"Enjoying the walk?"

To someone else, it would have been a trivial question, but the tone, the cadence between words, everything about it had a very subtle quality that told the former Talon sniper that Lena Oxton cared about something entirely different.

So she answered frankly: "I don't fit in."

Her former nemesis found an echo of herself in that answer.

"Me neither. Come, I'll buy you a drink." She walked towards the pub, but as the tall woman was not following her, she turned her head around: "I'm not going to poison you."

The yellow stare interrogated Lena dispassionately: _Even if you have plenty of reasons to do it?_

Tracer understood and rolled her eyes. She retorted scathingly: "No, I don't exactly love what you did to Gérard, Amari and Mondatta, but no, I'm not going to shoot you over it."

The barb was rewarded with something Lena had not expected: she saw pain flash briefly on the sniper's face. She stared at her erstwhile enemy for a nonplussed second, then she started walking again towards the pub: "Would you come on already?"

Widowmaker assessed the situation for dangers. Oxton had something in mind, but nothing hurtful.

Nothing physically hurtful, that was.

"Lead on."

It came as no surprise that there were no beverages exclusive for humans. As the Salarian bartender patiently explained, stocking them was simply not worth it, what with only about a couple hundred humans living on the Citadel, all of them being diplomats of some sort of another that never left the Presidium. Tracer accepted that with a smile, asking instead for a bottle of Asari brandy from Tamaris.

The blue-skinned sharpshooter was not good at small talk. She looked, empty-faced, at her former enemy as she took a sip of the sparkling purple liquid. Lena savored the beverage, eyes closed, then softly set the glass back on the table.

"Things like this make it worth it."

Widowmaker guessed Tracer wanted her to ask the question:

"Make what worth it?"

"Living," the Overwatch legend said simply. "I'm not going the way of brown bread out of old age. I talked to the doc, and she says you shouldn't be on your feet. So I suppose neither of us is going away anytime soon."

The sniper could not make any sense out of that.

"Why are you telling this to me?"

Tracer regarded her with a mixture of emotions. The whole visit to the Citadel was to her a welcome experience, as it helped rouse all kinds of things on her that she had thought irreversibly ossified by time and boredom. Even the combination of resentment, pity and intrigue evoked by the woman sitting across her table, arms and legs crossed, drink untouched.

"The doc and the gaffer both suggested I should have this chat with you. I'll be honest here, I won't say I'd have preferred to blow your brains off. I didn't care either way."

Widowmaker's brow twitched a bit at that. "What caused you to lose interest in me?"

Lena took another sip from her glass, eyes again closed in bliss, then exhaled slowly. She then looked at her again in the eye. "It's been fifty-three years already. You think putting some lead through your noggin would fix anything? Gérard is long dead… wait a second here." Tracer was genuinely surprised. Again the painful flash: _She's… hurt?_ "I have a question for you… Why?"

Amélie wanted to run away, to flee the bar and shed her tears alone in merciful privacy. Widowmaker welcomed the impulse, but did not flee. The tears, however, started pouring down her immutable face. She pointed an index finger at her yellow eyes. "Talon did this to me. They couldn't get to Gérard on their own, so they used me."

The Overwatch legend stared at her relentlessly. Widowmaker did not evade her piercing gaze, allowing Lena to probe her. Her voice had had the same cool, clinical, detached tone she had heard on their last deployments. If not for the tears that rolled freely down her cheeks Lena would not have noticed anything… no. There was something, an almost invisible shadow of an ancient pain. Her yellow stare was almost perfectly steady, but it occasionally quivered.

She pointed at Widowmaker's glass. "Drink. It's delicious."

The erstwhile Talon sniper obliged and took a sip. The implanted VI at once analyzed the sparkling beverage: traces of some berries unique to the Asari colony of Tamaris, sugars, eleven-point-six percent alcohol content, a variety of amino acids and organic compounds typical of vegetables.

It also was, as Tracer had said, exquisite.

" _C'est vraiment délicieux,_ " she stated, in the same emotionless voice.

"Is that all you can say?"

Widowmaker nodded in the friendliest fashion she could. "I like it very much, but that's the absolute best I can do." She found it very hard to say next: "This is all the emotion I'm capable of showing."

Lena noted how carefully she had chosen her words. Capable of _showing,_ she had said. But not capable of _feeling._

"I believe you," she said at last. "Nobody could understand how you had killed Gérard in cold blood."

The urge to stand up and flee would have overwhelmed anyone else. But all Widowmaker did was to sob once.

"I miss him," she whispered. "Greatly."

It was grotesque, seeing her outburst of pain. _Is it honest?_ Lena asked herself. She had to admit she did not know. The sniper was impossible to read beyond what she purposely let on, even for someone such as herself, a woman on her early eighties with the crisp and sharp senses of a twenty-something.

After a moment, Widowmaker recovered. "Excusez-moi." Her face became devoid of emotions again. With their enmity at least temporarily behind them, she could inspect her erstwhile enemy more closely. "You just said it's been fifty-three years. Have you been active all along?"

A quick nod. "And saw many interesting things along the way." She could infer enough from her question, but Lena had long since learned not to make assumptions. "But I didn't catch nary a breath from you."

The assassin browsed her recent memory. It responded much more quickly than attempts at retrieving at least a snippet from days half a century behind her. "I was told they found me on the South Orkney islands."

"'They'?"

"Miranda Lawson's agency."

Lena wrinkled her nose. "Ah, 'they'. Mighty obscure chaps, they are. That Lawson lass has been very tight-lipped." She bent her head slightly sideways. "What's your experience with them?"

Rather uncomfortably, Widowmaker uncrossed her arms. "I was smuggled out of Alliance space and reanimated in some space station on the Terminus worlds. Omega, I believe." She saw Tracer's face flash with recognition and continued. "Then I was taken to a different station… no. Some man interviewed me before that. He had the strangest eyes." She related to Lena her experience with Miranda's superior.

"Have you told this to the gaffer?"

The sniper shook her head once, slowly.

"Then why are you telling me?"

 _Why indeed?_ " _Ne sais pas._ Possibly I had to square things with you first." She remained silent for a while, then continued uneasily: "Your crew… was better to me than what I deserve. I suppose I wanted to wait and see what kind of treatment would I get from you."

 _'Better to me than what I deserve'. Well, would you look at that. It would almost appear like there's a conscience underneath all that ice._

"For what it's worth, the boss wouldn't have had such blinding words for you if she didn't really believe you did some good work. And she had to swallow her pride and hatred for that."

" _Je le sais._ " Again she said uneasily, surprised at how difficult it was for her to speak it out: "I know I owe her some debt of gratitude. But in a business kind of way." Her yellow eyes stared at Tracer's: "I can't unwind. I'm always looking at everything as if I was on a mission."

Lena leaned back on her chair. "Morrison used to say, 'no matter where you are, it's enemy territory'. He wouldn't believe this." A soft sigh. "But, you know what, I do, because I have a problem of my own. Quite often I don't give a rat's arse how something pans out."

All the indication she got of Widowmaker's reaction was her slightly arched eyebrows. "Not what I believed I'd hear from someone as lively and dedicated as you."

It was Tracer's turn now to speak uneasily. "I'm not like that anymore. I got an infinite supply of something everyone else doesn't. Time. It's easy to believe nothing really matters much then. You, Reyes, the bloody guvners up in the rotunda, you name it."

The woman across the table had not expected that. "That's bleak."

Lena reacted with a bitter laugh. "And I hear it from you out of all people. But aye, 'tis bleak. I have to struggle to find meaning in things." A snort. "Zenyatta says we relate to each other through our pain. I suppose that's why I followed Shepard's suggestion."

The sniper skilfully concealed her discomfiture at the mention of the omnic. "Would you say it was worth it?"

She answered that with a shrug, and gave her an odd look, part amused, part curious, part bored. "Would you?"

* * *

Elsewhere on the station, Shepard was asking herself something along those lines. She was not sure. "I hope this isn't a waste of time," she grumbled.

Behind her, Astrid smirked. "Oh, absolutely. Now I got some blackmail material." That earned her a biting look. Both women wore their best cocktail dresses. Her commander's was black silk, while Martinsson's own was scarlet satin, both of them ankle-length. Shepard's design was elegant and sophisticated, as opposed to the sensual and enticing cut of Astrid's.

"We're humans. People are going to look at us here no matter what."

"But we'd set a different tone if we'd come here in our uniforms, right?"

There was no arguing the point. Aaliyah knew Astrid had avoided committing to a serious relationship out of fear for her next try to be abruptly and unmercifully cut short by the vagaries of service life, as her last attempt had been by the battle over the skies of Pokhara. The consequence was that she knew good pubs and nightclubs on every place they had been stationed on, and if there were none, she was quick to set up something herself.

"Don't BS me, X. You have your own plans for the evening."

A giggle. "We just cast anchor on a new port, ma'am. This place has real possibilities."

She was also regarded as someone who got around, to put it tactfully. Her Starwatch fellows often poked her jokingly on the issue, but that was their privilege as close colleagues and friends. Others had made the mistake of trying to shame her for her loose ways, and learned too late that, asides from boisterous, fun-loving and passionate, Astrid was also a very skilled hand-to-hand fighter and wrestler.

"Supposing you're into aliens."

"Not yet," she admitted, "but I guess it would be worth a try. Besides, you're already up on that scoreboard, ma'am."

"Not out of personal preference, mind you."

"Really? Well, you left quite the lasting impression on your partners."

"That a fact?" Aaliyah asked absently as she surveyed the place. For a casino, it was strange. Not the kind of thing she was used to. Not a single roulette table, but plenty of electronic machines. Card games were played there as well, though.

"Any further and I'd risk breaking my word."

Despite her mind and senses scanning the place for threats and seeking whoever was supposed to meet them there, she had a moment for a small grin. "Someone begged you to be discrete?" _That would not be Valena._

"She was very shy, skipper." Astrid smiled on her own. "It was endearing, like being asked by your little sister to check if one of your classmates had a sweetheart."

She could guess what that was about. Apparently Asari felt the same attachment to their first lovers humans felt. Well, most humans, at any rate. "I never was smitten like that."

"That would explain a few things." Martinsson knew asking was a bad idea, but she could not help it: "What are you going to do about it, Shep—ma'am?"

 _She cares about her?_ Another carefully concealed but equally cautious glance at their surroundings, then she decided she could answer. "I don't know, Astrid. I've always dated men." _But I'm… not ruling it out?_ She was surprised at her own reaction. "Not the moment to—wait a second, what does it matter to you?"

Her subordinate was still smiling. "I told her it was quite unlikely. She was embarrassed in the cutest way." There was, of course, another message being sent. _Be nice to her, ma'am,_ Astrid was asking.

 _Just great._ She could see where it was going. Liara had proven instrumental to figure out the message on the Prothean monolith. What if her expertise was needed again? Someone with the emotional maturity of an early teen could decide not to assist out of spite…

 _There are other experts,_ she told herself, and she would have all the authority necessary to demand compliance, with both the Alliance and the Citadel behind her.

Still, she felt horrible for a dreadful second.

And that was her last frivolous thought for the night. Two Turian guards in casino livery approached them. "The Silver Coast Casino bids you welcome, ladies," one of them greeted them courteously. "You are being expected. Please follow us."

The guards led Shepard and Martinsson to a private gambling room. There were gaming tables and machines there, but no croupier, or whatever name they gave to croupiers here. Instead, sitting alone on a table, and flanked by two Asari attendants, waited the absurdly squat figure of a Volus.

"Thank you for accepting my invitation. *hiss* Please excuse me for not getting up. I just changed suits and I still feel a bit sore."

"There's nothing to excuse," Shepard replied. "You are Barla Von, am I right?"

A slow, ponderous nod. "Indeed. Please make yourselves comfortable. *hiss* I took the liberty of procuring some beverages for you." One of the attendants pushed a small cart towards the table.

Aaliyah politely refused with a gesture as she sat. "You are well informed, mister Von, but I do not drink while I am on duty."

"Not even tea or coffee? I have some excellent… *hiss* …blends. My assistant here practiced extensively to prepare it well."

Shepard's second-in-command flashed a lips-only smile at the Volus. "I would never had imagined you were so good at stroking people."

"In this line of business, miss Martinsson, that skill is necessary. *hiss* It is also necessary to know how to engender trust. Our current situation demands it. *hiss* Please, indulge me. Poisoning you would not do my employer any favors."

The Asari attendant was already at work. Shepard detected nervousness in her and wondered how much of that was an act.

Then she reminded herself how they had gotten into the current situation on the first place.

"Your 'employer's' interference almost cost us the goodwill of the Council. No attempt at temporizing is going to change that, however good the coffee."

Barla Von took that with another hiss of his breathing apparatus. "My patron recognizes this. I have been told to extend to you an apology, some compensation and an offer."

Shepard crossed her arms and glared at the Shadow Broker's representative. Then she addressed the Asari attendant: "I'll have a black coffee. No sugar, please, only a pinch of salt."

"Yes, miss."

Both women watched in silence as the coffee was prepared and poured on a simple white cup. Aaliyah sipped it cautiously: it was a bit weak for her personal taste, and her request for 'only a pinch of salt' had been taken too literally, but it still was a decent coffee.

"Alright, I'm listening. The juicy stuff first. What kind of compensation are you talking about?"

With a gesture, the Volus dismissed the attendants. Once they had left, he began: "You should understand first, that my patron's association with Saren Arterius was a strictly professional… *hiss* …relationship, in the same fashion Tela Vasir was a business acquaintance. In no way this detracts from our responsibility in the… *hiss* …events that have transpired, but this meeting should prove our willingness to accommodate to the new situation."

"And that is?"

"It has come to our attention that the Spectre Arterius threatens… *hiss* …to unleash calamities that are certain to disrupt my patron's business." In spite of herself, Shepard had to admire how the voice came out without a shred of irony. "Furthermore, you are in position to expose an important part of our operations on Citadel space… *hiss* …considering that the Spectre Vasir is under your custody. We are prepared to make a series of concessions to… *hiss* …limit the damage."

 _'Concessions.' Oh well. What was it that Vakarian said? You're dealing with all kinds of strange people on this line of work._ "That's a shrewd analysis. What are you putting on the table?"

Again, Von bowed his head ponderously. "You may have noticed we invited you and not Garrus Vakarian, your fellow Turian officer. *hiss* That is so because we surmised you would not want him to hear about Cerberus."

 _Cerberus?_ "Explain yourself."

"That's the organization… *hiss* …Miranda Lawson works for. It's a black operation within Alliance government, a special tasks group meant to operate in clandestinity." Painstakingly he stretched out to hand over a memory card. Slowly, Astrid stood up and took it. Another hiss of his breathing apparatus, then he continued: "We understand several high ranking officers, including a few of your sponsors, have knowledge of it. That woman you captured in… *hiss* …Iera is actually the lieutenant to the overall commander of the operation."

After a fashion, she had been forewarned of such a possibility by Miranda's emphatic defense of her organization's secrets, especially when intel on the Pragia facility had been made available to her. "Where are they based?"

"Multiple locations, actually," was the reply. "But they are… *hiss* …hard to pinpoint. Cerberus is very protective of its deployments. Their leadership is quite competent. The data enclosed… *hiss* …should give you an idea about what they're up to."

"Accurate facts on that surely will come at a price," Astrid commented sharply.

"We are willing to make concessions to an extent, but we are not into philanthropy," Von agreed dryly.

"This is… interesting, but secondary to the Compact's mission," Shepard objected. "If you are smart enough to figure out why I'd find this data useful, you should also imagine why I could perceive this as an attempt to distract me." _Now I understand better what Miranda said. If I pursue these leads… If it's an Alliance black op I don't know about…_

The Volus slightly tilted his head. "Your reputation does you credit. Yes, it's a logical reaction. That is why… *hiss* …we have something else to offer as compensation. Saren is procuring machinery and biological materials for use on genetic engineering." He produced a transparent tablet computer from a bag, tapped a few commands on it, and handed it over.

Shepard took it and scanned the data. It was a freighter's cargo manifest obtained from a dock on Omega. "To what end?"

"At first glance… *hiss* …my employer's supposition was that it's related to his plan to use the Rachni."

 _This intel can't be that old._ "Is this Rana Thanoptis some sort of intermediary of his?"

"We have no direct confirmation of that, but that is our estimate."

Astrid checked the dates. "That ship can't have left port more than three days ago."

"That is correct. Regrettably I can't offer you any data about its current whereabouts. *hiss* The moment we know about it we will inform you."

Shepard dwelt on that for a few instants. "Awfully generous."

"It is not our wish to make an enemy out of the Compact. *hiss* When conflicts break out between factions or countries, there are profits to be had, but what the rogue Spectre intends to do… *hiss* …would bring advantage to no one."

"That's very civil of you," she said scathingly. "Now, what about the offer from your boss?"

"We understand you would look upon us with suspicion, given the fate of Tela Vasir… *hiss* …but my employer wishes to have a professional relationship with you. I think you will like to know that even those among the Spectres… *hiss* …that harbor little liking for you still respect your prowess and accomplishments. That is a recommendation we would be remiss to ignore. *hiss*"

Shepard's first impulse was to refuse, but, mercenary or not, Barla Von had spoken reasonably about one thing. Earning the enmity of the Compact was a bad idea, and that worked both ways: she could not afford to have the Shadow Broker as an adversary. It grated on her, but that was fact.

"Let's speak plainly here, mister Von. You said it yourself: trust is necessary for any kind of business, and I don't trust your boss. Whether we can work together or not depends on how useful the compensation you have provided today turns out to be."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ What I meant for Genji to say is this: _"with a bit of luck, maybe it will never happen._ " My thanks to **G. S. tol Kriaal** and my ninjutsu sensei, **Cristian Laz,** for the help with the language.

As my knowledge of French and Japanese is **_extremely_** rudimentary, if I screwed up, get in touch so I can fix it. Please.

A heart-felt thank you to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for their proofreading work and the ideas to keep my gears turning.


	27. Citadel: Cups

_Girls' Night Out_

"Come in," Shepard said without looking, her attention focused on her tablet computer.

The door slid open. Reyes walked in.

With slow steps he approached and placed a small package on her desk.

"I don't need this anymore," he said quietly. "I believe you should have it." He gave her a curt nod, turned on his heel, and left.

Aaliyah watched Gabriel go with skilfully concealed puzzlement. Her face only changed after the door closed behind him.

Carefully she opened the box.

Her heart skipped two beats when she saw the single item inside.

The Starwatch colonel breathed in and out a few times, then she stood up, opened a cabinet, and reached for an old box. She placed it on her desk next to Reyes' package, and with reverent care, she picked up Reaper's mask and placed it inside, next to the insignias that once had belonged to her old team.

* * *

"Okay, people, let's get this out of the way." Shepard leaned with both hands on the conference table. "We have been given carte blanche to track down this fucker and skin him alive. Where do we start?"

Eyes blinked across the table.

"Funny. The way I've always seen it, commanders never ask their underlings for decisions," Wrex quipped maliciously.

"We call this brainstorming," she replied evenly. "We analyze what we know of our target and sketch out possible courses of action together. I want everyone's input, and that includes both of you, Dr. T'Soni and Tali'Zorah. Then Garrus, Valena and I choose."

Heads nodded. "Well, since-since you asked for it," Liara began haltingly, "I think one of the obvious leads is finding out where-where my mother is and what… she's up to."

"She's a public Asari figure, isn't she?" Reyes surprisingly backed her. Shepard noticed his increased assertiveness but commented nothing. "Someone like that should have a hard time lying low."

"I would hope it did not come down to that," Valena ventured slowly, "but you have never faced someone like Matriarch Benezia as an opponent. She is an extremely powerful biotic, and we do not have anyone who can match her." She looked at the Starwatch crew: "To put it into perspective, she possesses the kind of might it would require to turn this ship into a tightly packed hunk of metal."

"Nothing a well placed bullet cannot solve," Widowmaker said softly. Her callous comment caused everyone to briefly hold their voices.

"Perhaps," the Asari commando allowed, "but even if you succeeded, eliminating her would serve us no purpose. Furthermore, I believe Saren would have taken precautions to stop her from talking."

"You mean someone on her own side would…?" Liara blanched.

"I don't believe it would happen easily," Valena replied. "It would be as difficult for Saren to achieve it as it would be for us to interrogate her safely. But I would not put it past him. Consider how he already schemed to try and neutralize Tali'Zorah," she pointed out.

"You say we don't have anyone who can challenge her on equal terms. What about T'Perro?" Anika asked.

"I wouldn't rely on her much," Garrus answered warily. "She's been pressing for her species to have a more 'direct' involvement in galactic affairs. At every opportunity she has used her prestige as a Spectre to piss off the Matriarchy for being too lazy on their asses, so you can be sure she's not best friends with them. But that doesn't mean good news for you."

"Then in we come," Amari commented, her gears turning as she spoke. "For someone who lives a thousand years… we're a bunch of upstarts. No wonder she doesn't like us."

"There is something else," Liara added, her voice brittle: "Shilyna is—was my mother's student. She mastered biotics at her feet, but at some point… they argued, I don't know what happened. Long before she became a Spectre. They aren't on friendly terms."

"So why let her in on the Compact?" Tracer asked.

"Political reliability?" Martinsson offered. "Say, bring in someone hostile to us to make sure we don't get too cocky or they don't slip out anything too delicate?"

"You could see it that way. The truth?" Garrus snorted. "In Nihlus' own words, we had to shore up some numbers. He and Bau talked her right into it by dangling the privilege of ratting us out in front of her eyes. So you can imagine how well it sat on her that we actually succeeded."

"So you're telling us that we have an in-house political enemy to deal with?" Shepard grumbled.

"Yes and no. Above all things, T'Perro is reliable—she will accomplish the mission, even if she has to accommodate parties she disagrees with," Danaan explained. "But she cannot confront her old master. Not by herself alone."

"Benezia won't be alone," Vakarian continued the Asari's train of thought. "She's got whole cadres of commandos at her beck and call. Almost as good as Valena here. Almost," he repeated.

"We could request the assistance of one of her colleagues," Shimada suggested.

Valena shook her head. "The Matriarchs have a very collegial mindset. Not a few of them also are of a similar mind with Benezia about keeping the Alliance at bay. I have a hard time thinking of someone with the right combination of age, mindset and biotic skills who could be of assistance."

"Then we go nuclear," Martinsson said forcefully. "Given the intel we've gathered we could petition the Council for an arrest warrant against her. However badass she might be, she won't be going postal on a bunch of policemen in full view of everyone. Asari commandos aren't going to shoot their own countrymen over that either."

"Well, you called it 'going nuclear'... It's appropriate, alright," Garrus said ruefully. "It would tear apart Asari politics. A lot would argue that humanity has manipulated the Council into it."

Shepard suppressed the urge to pull at her own hairs: " _Fuck politicians!_ They've messed up our job enough already."

"We do this carelessly, and we make an enemy out of a good portion of the Asari, colonel," Anika cautioned. "I don't like it either, but Vakarian has a point. Remember what we had to do to get the Council to authorize us."

Aaliyah took a deep breath, then summed up: "So invoking the Council mandate can end up biting us back in the ass. And it's even money on a covert op—if she puts up a fight there's no way to subdue her short of killing her. Marvelous."

Gabriel spoke up, and that sent a chill down her back: "We haven't considered poison. I could sneak in, spike her food or drink, and once she's out cold, take her somewhere for extraction."

Tracer recoiled at the proposition, but Layali Amari did not. "The idea has some merit," she supported it reluctantly. "That's not stopping me from wishing there was a better way to go about it."

"It won't be just her you'll have to contend with," Miranda pointed out. "You managed to hold off Vasir long enough, but she was only one."

"I wouldn't want to do it," Wrex admitted grudgingly. "You don't want to go against Asari commandos. Turians will pin you down under a storm of gunfire and call in an orbital strike on you. Salarians will sabotage everything and you'll only find out just before you see they have you surrounded. There aren't that many Asari soldiers and warriors, but they don't need to have any more. They're artists. Nobody knows war like they do." After a pause, he added with reluctance. "We used to, but not anymore."

After a brief hush, Garrus asked: "Remind me how old you are, Urdnot."

"I fought on the Rebellions," was the hoarse answer.

Shepard took one last look around the table. Tali'Zorah was the only one that had not spoken, but she was way out of her depth and she knew it, reason for which she had the good sense to keep quiet.

"We are agreed then that the options available for dealing with Benezia at the moment are lousy and fraught with dangers." A series of nods answered her. "We're going to move on for a while, then. We have our hands full: Geth and an attempt to breed Rachni as a slave army." She turned towards the Quarian: "Tali'Zorah, out of everyone here you're the one who knows the Geth the most. What are they capable of?"

All heads turned to face Tali. Aaliyah could not see it, but she was sure the girl had blushed behind her faceplate. "Well… they're not war machines. The Geth we created shouldn't be too different from the Geth you will find. Their platforms are multipurpose, not built specially for battle. That said, there will be variants—lighter and heavier models. I honestly can't give you much information about how intelligently they will act in combat. I can tell you that destroying their platforms won't kill them—the 'real' Geth are software, so when their physical bodies are destroyed they beam back to a mainframe and eventually redeploy."

"Much like our own omnics," Amari noted. Neither Brulirea nor Lumiscant were there, having remained back on Erinyes while the Council passed their ruling.

But Tali'Zorah shook her head. "I really want to have a close look at your 'omnics', but I gather they're built like artificial humanoids—a central processing core emulating a brain, a single sentient kernel, memory banks to store their personality and knowledge, things like that. Geth aren't built that way. Individual Geth software units are rather dumb, but their cognitive capabilities grow with their number. They are networked intelligences. I wouldn't say they are individually sentient yet."

Both Tracer and Genji were reminded of Zenyatta. "Wait until you meet my master. He will make you question yourself on many things. Where is the line between 'something' and 'someone', to begin with," Shimada told her.

The comment disquieted Tali. "What sparked the Morning War… was a single question," she almost whispered. "A Geth asked of its master: 'does this unit have a soul?'"

Lena snorted. "And Zeny would ask you: 'have you one?'"

"You said something of note. If the Geth are networked intelligences, then if one of them spots something, then they all do," Amari remarked.

"That's correct."

Shimada looked at Tali with no small wonder: "And you managed to remain undetected on a world occupied by them long enough to steal the data you gave us?" He smiled. "There is more to you than meets the eye."

"Well," she stammered, "it's only logical we would know how to stay out of their sight. We made them."

"Aye, but that didn't happen last week, luv," Tracer quipped amicably.

"We need to know how you pulled that off. We'll have to deal with them sooner or later," Shepard said darkly. "I would prefer it happened _sooner_ rather than _later,_ before they showed up on some colony. What do we know of Saren's intermediary?"

Valena tapped her omni-tool a few times to bring up a dossier on the hologram projector set on the center of the conference table. "Rana Thanoptis is a medical researcher specializing in neurology. She's always worked in minor roles as an assistant to more senior scientists. No project she worked on produced any important breakthroughs, only some speculative white papers, all of them about rather obscure brain diseases."

"She's a nobody," Wrex grunted. "Just another egghead."

"Well, it's… fairly typical, alright," Liara conceded. "The academic environment is very cutthroat. Most researchers devote their whole lives to their work, so… you can have the exact same team lineup for decades, even centuries. It takes a very determined and perseverant personality to make a name for yourself there."

Anika snorted, something unusual for her. "I can imagine what it would be like. Having to put up with a lead scientist you don't see eye to eye with is awful. Living with that for a hundred years…"

"Seems like this one got tired of waiting for her lucky break. But why would Saren need a neuroscientist?" Shepard wondered. "Say, this woman was a geneticist, okay, I get it, you'll have a monster of a puzzle to put together if you want to bring back an extinct species, even if you got some eggs to start with. But a brain doc?"

"Biotics?" Astrid hazarded. "That magic thingy happens there."

"That takes a different kind of specialist," Liara pointed out. "You have only known biotics for a few years, but it's part of our biological identity. There's a panoply of disorders, conditions and diseases that go along with it. Biotics don't just mean not having to stand up to fetch a glass from the cupboard."

It did not escape Shepard how different the young Asari had sounded while talking science. _You only need to apply that kind of aplomb and conviction to your everyday life and nothing would get in your way…_

"Her ship left Omega four days ago now. If only we knew which way it went…"

Miranda raised a hand. "With the colonel's permission, I would like to contact my old network and see if they come up with something we can use."

Aaliyah had already been through this situation once, and all considerations and misgivings she could have she had evaluated the first time around, except for one. She was still digesting the Shadow Broker's peace offering. Unless it was a very clever piece of disinformation, it raised the possibility of the Alliance's pretended inability to gather intelligence on Citadel space being just a charade to cover for the huge network Cerberus was still building… and if Miranda had been second-in-command of the whole operation, why had its leader been so willing to potentially expose himself that much? Was having an agent on the Compact —one whom they had never yet caught sending out anything to anyone— worth the security risk?

She stopped herself. That speculation was not leading her anywhere. "Under Mercy's supervision, and I get to see everything you send over or you get from them."

* * *

Shepard walked into the mess hall. She was up over two hours earlier than usual. Her sleep had been fitful, full of half-glimpsed images and echoes of voices and sounds she could almost understand. Some of that had borne a disturbing resemblance to the visions she had explored with Liara's help, but she had been unable to make any sense out of it, only gleaning from the whole experience that there had been more to the Protheans' message than just a warning about the Reapers.

The young Asari was there as well, and was startled to see her: "Oh, good morning, colonel… You're up early."

"I had an awful night." She rubbed her eyes, then stole a glance at her. The girl had shyly turned away from her, her face a lively shade of cyan. She smiled tiredly: "Astrid and I have been comrades and friends for over twenty-three years, doctor." For a second she had thought about using her first name instead, but it would only further unsettle her. She again found that fragility disarming and endearing.

"I… yes, I knew, that's why… no, I didn't plan on it, but I—well…" She was even more flushed. "I'm sorry, colonel, this is all very new for me. I'm just… maybe I'm only still reacting to the experience."

She sat. Her tired face became warmer. "It's perfectly normal, Liara. You just happen to be very close to your crush." Aaliyah spoke candidly, trying her best not to come off as a tease or as its opposite.

The girl froze and turned around slowly, fright written in her eyes. "I… I didn't mean for this," she stammered. Her face had said something else: _please don't turn me away…_

"Sit," she invited her.

Slowly, the blue-skinned girl obliged. "Valena… I recall she didn't react like this."

"Valena is almost three centuries older than you. She's done a lot of things you haven't even imagined yet." The Asari's anxiety was almost palpable. Shepard had to fight back the impulse to reach out to her. "Liara, relax. I don't want you hurt."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. It's that… I don't see an easy way out for me."

"You're being overly dramatic." Shepard smiled, in part to conceal her own discomfort. "I don't know how to handle it either. I was talking it over with Astrid. I told her that I've always dated only men."

Color was drained from the Asari's face. She kept rigid control of her features: "Yes. I understand."

"No, you don't." She inspired deeply. "It's also new for me." She looked right into her eyes, hoping she would not turn away: "What do you want with me, Liara?"

The young girl struggled with herself, trying to find the right thing to say, and failing: "I—can't say!" She suddenly turned bright cyan again. "I'm sorry, it's… by the Goddess, it's very embarrassing."

Shepard smiled enigmatically. "Try me. I won't run. Cross my heart and hope to die."

She looked studiously at her feet, then said almost imperceptibly: "I… I want to meld with you again." She blushed even more, if such a thing was at all possible.

"Why?" Her voice rang slightly amused. "Was there something you would like to take another look at?"

She had teased her just the right way. An abashed giggle, and then: "No. Well… yes. I'm not certain about some things in your vision."

Aaliyah grinned widely now. _Do I call her out… or continue to tease her… Why am I doing this to begin with?_ "I see. And you need to examine it much more closely."

Again she giggled, still embarrassed, but very slightly less so. But that timid sliver of confidence popped like a bubble in front of her eyes: "You aren't… you won't refuse me?"

Shepard sighed. "I just asked myself why am I going along with this. The answer is, I don't know. But nothing in me is saying, 'oh no way.'"

Liara almost smiled at that, but another doubt tormented her just then: "And does it bother you that… it doesn't bother you?"

It was a rather convoluted way of saying it, but Aaliyah understood. "Maybe. In my eyes, you're a woman. I've never dated women. Men like to say that every woman is a latent bisexual, but that's a fetish they like to run with. I've never felt that impulse."

The young Asari bowed her understanding, less fearful now that she knew what was happening inside Shepard's head. That understanding helped her shift gears unusually smoothly: "Not even now?"

Involuntarily, Aaliyah pictured herself entwined with this young girl between the sheets—and sharply breathed in in arousal.

 _What's going on with me?_

But now it was out in the open, and there was only one way to find out. She was a practical woman, and this matter was no exception—not in the flamboyant and almost promiscuous fashion of Astrid, but either she liked someone or she did not.

"This is not the right place to discuss that. Come."

* * *

"Look." Shepard pointed at a new icon on the ladar screen a day later.

Garrus and Valena looked at it. "Diplomatic cruiser _Dharan,_ " the Turian read out loud, then something clicked in his brain: "Wait, diplomats… are they the same that were around Geth turf?"

"That they are. Mercy, please hail them."

"Yes, colonel."

After a minute, the main screen changed to show a faceplate Shepard had last seen in person decades ago.

"Colonel Shepard," Zenyatta said cordially. "I'm pleased to see you are doing well. May I offer you congratulations for your success. You and your fellow Citadel officers have set an example for us to follow."

Aaliyah bowed her head in awe. Even through such impersonal means as a computer screen, the immense dignity and warmth of the omnic sage reached her. "Coming from you, that's tall words, your Eminence. I look forward to seeing you personally."

The omnic dismissed her compliment with a friendly gesture of his hand. "I am no Eminence, colonel, but I appreciate your intent. I will wait for your arrival at the docks in Erinyes." He waved in dismissal, and the transmission was cut.

"So that was the famous Tekhartha Zenyatta," Vakarian noted.

"I so wish Tali'Zorah had seen this," Shepard said simply.

"She will, very soon," Valena commented.

That was effectively realized a scarce half an hour later. The omnic sage, true to his word, had waited for Shepard's own ship to dock, half a dozen acolytes in attendance. The first ones to greet him were, of course, his two disciples:

"Genji. Lena. Peace be upon you."

The ninja bowed deeply. "Greetings, master. You honor us with your presence here."

Tracer smiled. "Oi, Zeny. Happy to see you finally made it."

Shepard had intentionally let Tali disembark behind the two Overwatch legends. The whole scene appeared to her abhorrent and intriguing at the same time. The _thing_ was a synthetic, clear as day, or at the very least a shell for a few living tidbits. But it was _plain._ Whatever optic sensors it could have were behind a pair of slits on its rigid faceplate. The jointed frame seemed primitive in comparison with the smooth, almost organic fittings of the Geth her race had created, and the light, ascetic pants and sandals that clothed it seemed grotesque to her eyes.

Then the robot turned to regard her. "Ah, we meet at last." It bowed its head politely. "Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, the daughter of admiral Rael'Zorah, am I correct?"

"How do you know about my father?" she said warily.

"I hope you will excuse my bad manners for pointing out the obvious," was the humorous reply, "but you are not precisely obscure yourself."

She mildly recoiled at that. "I don't like a machine knowing facts about my family."

"And what could I possibly do with that knowledge?" Zenyatta replied reasonably.

"How can I know you won't somehow exploit it to harm us?"

Some form of antipathy on Tali's part had been logically expected, though the suddenness of her outburst caught everyone off guard. Except for the omnic monk and his senior apprentice.

"There is a tale that perhaps you should hear," he begun. "An emperor would study under a famous teacher. He once asked of him a question, one which you probably recall, Genji."

"I do, master," Shimada answered at once: "'This very mind is emptiness. Is this correct?'"

"And the teacher replied, 'If I say yes, you will think you understand without truly understanding. If I say no, I would be contradicting a fact that many understand well'", Zenyatta answered at once.

"On another day, the emperor asked of the teacher: 'Where does the enlightened man go when he dies?'" Genji continued.

"The master answered, 'I know not'", was Zenyatta's reply.

"'Why don't you know?', the emperor asked."

"'Because I have not died yet,'" the omnic monk finished.

A few seconds of silence followed as Tali, despite her wariness, tried to tackle the koan, and predictably failed to unlock it. "Is that all?" she demanded with irritation.

Tracer smiled warmly. "I hate to blow the whistle here, but my colleague and teacher here have tricked you."

"What? How?"

"It is a Zen parable," the ninja replied. "Students wrestle with it for years, sometimes for decades, before they can glean some form of enlightenment from it."

Tali was annoyed, though not to the point that she could not admit that those were not the words and actions she had come to expect from a robot. But that realization only further annoyed her.

"Is there something else to this 'parable'?"

"The emperor dwelt on the answer he had gotten from his master, and hesitated to ask any further about things his mind could not grasp." Zenyatta regarded the Quarian benignly. "There are many more layers of truth to this parable, but learning to choose your concerns with care is one piece of wisdom you can readily attain from it."

To Tali, that came off as a suggestion that she worried about foolish things. The notion was insulting, but… would both Overwatch legends play along just to mess with her? It could happen, but how likely was that?

She would see many interesting things on her Pilgrimage, her elders had told her. She did not think they would have meant this.

"The survival of my people is not a meaningless concern." Her voice, however, had lost some of its edge.

"Survival never is," the omnic agreed serenely. "But the overzealous pursuit of any objective may cause you to see enemies where there are friends."

 _No robot has ever been a friend to us._ "It's still safer than mistaking an enemy for a friend."

"If I may," Shepard cut in, "perhaps we can continue this discussion somewhere else? It's too many people here on the docks."

Zenyatta bowed his agreement. "But of course. My apologies, colonel."

The moment they had left the main entrance gates behind them, they were met by more people, this time clad in labcoats.

" _Priviet, gospozha Shepard'yeva!_ " an exultant Mila Palukhina welcomed her. "Let me say it before anything else. Great work!"

"It was a team effort, doc." Aaliyah smiled at the Latin-Asian-Russian woman. "I'm glad to see you are again in high spirits."

"You pulled through for all of us, _tovarich._ People back at Elysium were overjoyed to learn of the ruling. Léon Kerkerian asked me to thank you on behalf of himself and the Illyria garrison."

"Again, we all did it. When did you arrive here?"

"Oh, only yesterday. I'm still easing into this place." Only then she seemed to notice Garrus and Valena, who were politely listening: "Oh! Please excuse my bad manners. You're… Garrus Vakarian, is it? May I ask about your father's name?"

The Turian did the equivalent of a frown. "Nothing to excuse, doctor. My father's name is Castis. Why?"

" _Spasiba, Garrus Castisovich._ " Palukhina laughed gaily.

"'Castisovich'?"

"It's a patronymic," Shepard explained with a grin. "It's customary for people from Slavic cultures to address someone using her first name and an appellative based on her father's name."

"So, following that pattern," Valena asked with a tiny smile, "what would be your own patronymic? Markovna?"

"That's right." The Asari commando knew her father's first name was Marcus — hence the Slavic translation Marko.

"It's about time you arrived," Karin Chakwas said to Garrus next. "There are two girls here that have been waiting for you."

The Turian closed his eyes. That was a moment he had been dreading. "What happened?"

The doctor grimaced. "Jaenna'Gisal took it 'slightly' better than her daughter. She got almost insanely angry, yelling at us that we had doomed her daughter to a lifetime of subservience to us because there was no way in hell we were going to let her go with all those implants. Not to mention with a sentient AI… But she didn't go berserk and wreck a room."

Garrus cursed under his breath, very aware of Tali'Zorah, who was only further horrified by each word Chakwas said. The rest of the Compact crew was also listening:

"Genji, how was it like for you?" Tracer asked.

"Honestly, I didn't think much of it at the beginning," the ninja admitted. "I was just glad to be back on my feet. But when it started to sink in, I felt I had lost my way. A stranger with a foot in both worlds but belonging in neither."

"Then you met Zeny."

"Not immediately afterward… but yes. My master here helped me make amends with my new existence."

Vakarian knew they were having this conversation for his benefit, to illustrate how Genji had been in a different but relatable situation. He knew what this would lead to. He was reluctant to suggest it, the idea that synthetics were an enemy drilled into him by years and years of military service and the gruesome tales of horror and destruction the Quarians had told.

But he had had synthetic comrades in arms, even commanding them in battle. He still kept them at a healthy distance —there was no way to tell when those could snap, or whether their cooperative behavior was nothing but a gigantic charade—, but the humans that had been their enemies now did not even bother with something as simple as keeping them out of the armory. In fact, as engineers, it was part of Brulirea's and Lumiscant's duties to service their small arms and heavy weapons.

He stopped and turned towards Zenyatta: "Just to make sure I got this clearly, Shimada here says you kind of helped him figure himself out."

"I only helped him find his own way," the omnic answered politely. "Genji had to walk it himself. That I cannot do. Neither for him, nor for anyone."

Garrus looked silently at the near-featureless faceplate for a second. "You came here for this, didn't you." A long sigh. "Forget I said anything, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't know how to help her. Maybe you do."

* * *

When Shepard and Garrus walked into the observation room along with Zenyatta and some of the Compact crew, the first thing they noticed was Jaenna'Gisal sitting quietly by one of the windows, staring below at the secure cell that housed her unconscious daughter.

And the Quarian woman also noticed them. Slowly and deliberately she turned to face the newcomers.

"Some payment I got for all the years I passed on data to you." Her biting remark cut through the Turian all the more deeply as it was delivered slowly and in a quiet voice.

Aaliyah clenched her fists. "Next time something happens to a Quarian we'll just leave her to die where we find her. Nobody here told you how we came upon her?"

"Shepard…" Garrus raised a hand, then drooped his shoulders. "I'm sorry, Jaenna. You're right. I should have told her to stay out of that mission."

The woman did not react. Her face was obscured by the near-opaque dark yellow crystal of her large visor, but her cold fury and anger were clearly visible in her slow but sharp motions. Tali walked towards her and turned to face the rest of the group, unaware of what they were up to but ready to stand by her.

When Zenyatta came into her full view, she stood up parsimoniously, arms crossed before her chest. "What is this?" she asked sharply. "So now that my daughter is half-robot, a robot comes to take her away?"

"Never against her will," was the quiet response. This elicited a snort.

"Sure. So you'll use the override you've built into her brains to make her beg you to take her with you."

"There is no override, miss Gisal," Chakwas said with a tired voice. Evidently she had tried to talk sense into the Quarian several times, and unsuccessfully at that. "What we have installed—"

"Call it by its proper name," was the almost guttural answer.

"Jaenna," Anika stepped in. "Karin Chakwas is a doctor. She has sworn an oath to do no harm, to do everything within her power to save lives. She did what she had to do to help your daughter."

"Then she broke her oath," she retorted bitterly. "She has made her a pariah among her own kin. Tell me how that is to do no harm."

The gray-haired doctor recoiled at that as if she had taken a blow. This almost caused Shepard to snap, but she was anticipated by Zenyatta:

"I understand you can ingest a very few choice drinks and foods," he noted. "Can I invite you a cup of tea?"

"What?" The irate Quarian was caught by surprise.

He turned next to Chakwas. "Surely there is something available for her to drink here."

"It wasn't easy to find, but yes," the doctor replied warily, not understanding what that was about.

Genji apparently had grasped his master's intent at once, given his slight smile. "Doctor, where is this beverage? I'd like to fetch it myself."

Jaenna'Gisal was now confused on top of angry. "Something is wrong about you if you think you can appease me that way."

The omnic's voice changed very slightly: "Please, indulge me. It's naught but a drink."

Chakwas, puzzled, gave the indications to Shimada and the ninja scurried away. The older Quarian, still vexed, glanced momentarily at Tali. The girl was slowly catching on, her mind still juggling the parable the omnic sage had told her minutes before along with her own misgivings and fears, but said nothing.

Genji arrived at last with the drink. It was Turian in origin, a herbal infusion not so different from a tea. He bowed reverently to his master, set the tray with the bottle and the cup in front of him, then knelt behind him.

"Please," Zenyatta begged Jaenna once more. Again she looked at Tali'Zorah, but this time the younger Quarian did not look back.

Slowly and warily she stood up, approached the omnic, and sat in front of him. Everyone held their breaths, not understanding what a robot would have to do with some tea. Everyone except for Genji.

The omnic reached for the bottle, opened it without noise, then poured the beverage on the cup until it was full, then kept on pouring.

"What are you doing?" Jaenna hissed at once. "It is full. You can't pour more liquid in there!"

It was not Zenyatta who spoke, but Genji behind him. "Like that cup," he said softly, head still bowed over his chest, "you are full of opinions and speculations. How can we help you unless you first empty your cup?"

Zenyatta stopped pouring and handed over the cup. Both Jaenna and Tali were stunned for a second. The older Quarian raised a hand hesitatingly, as if struggling to find some words, but she found she could not refuse the proferred drink. Reluctantly she took the cup.

But before she could sip the tea through the straw, the omnic asked, staring at the cup, "I wonder if your people still make pottery out of clay."

Once again, the question nonplussed her, but she was now aware that there was a point to this robot's questions, even if she could not guess what it was.

"We used to, but not anymore," she replied in a cool, unfriendly voice.

"A pity." He bowed his head. "It is still a tradition back on Earth. I used to go for a stroll around the markets in the town where our first temple was and talk to the artisans. There is something to be said about simple crafts. They breed patience and perseverance.

"One such artisan, a potter, would always come to the temple with very simple questions, and insisted on inviting me to share his table during his lunch breaks.

"It is customary for me and my fellow teachers to impart guidance to promising students personally, apart from the rest. I was once lecturing Genji in this fashion when the potter came over and asked to see me. I sent word to him that I was occupied, and asked of him to wait in another room.

"Then the potter replied: 'I understand you are an enlightened master. Even the stone statues in the temple never refuse the numerous persons who come together before them. Why then should I be excluded?'"

Tali went rigid. Jaenna noted this, but did not understand:

"So what does that mean?"

Zenyatta extended an arm and pointed to the right, to the windows to her daughter's room, and asked: "Why should she be excluded?"

Then Jaenna's mind fit the pieces together and she went rigid herself. Something cracked within her when she realized how she was behaving towards her own daughter.

The omnic noticed this and his voice softened with sympathy. "Empty your cup, Jaenna."

* * *

"How many are there like him?" Garrus asked quietly, as he looked down the window into the room below, where Zenyatta, Jaenna'Gisal and Tali'Zorah conversed with Shilu'Vael.

"He is a legend," Lena replied. "He's been around since the First Omnic Crisis."

"There are many Shambali masters," Genji pointed out, "but he is the most well known of them. People revere him as a guru, however much he detests it."

Valena nodded. "I can understand why." Then she smiled at him: "And all this time, you have been his disciple?"

With some embarrassment, the ninja answered: "Yes. I have always felt there is still so much I have to learn."

The mood in the observation room was reverent. At first they had feared the interned Quarian girl would fly into another fit of rage and try to trash Zenyatta, but it had not gone past some loud words.

"I hope we did the right thing," Karin Chakwas let out.

"Don't let that get under your skin, doc," Shepard tried to reassure her.

The old woman shook her head. "There are things I cannot repair."

"Good thing Zeny came over, then," Lena said softly.

Shepard's omni-tool vibrated then. She tapped it: "This Lawson chick got something for us." She glanced at Garrus: "You stay here. I'll call for you if you're needed."

Vakarian thanked her with a polite nod. "Keep me posted."

* * *

"What is it?" Shepard asked as she walked into Miranda's quarters on her ship.

"I hope you'll excuse me if I'm overreaching," the woman said in a clinical tone that belied her words, "but I strongly recommend you find a motive to slip out of Erinyes without any Citadel personnel present."

"Why is that?"

"Something is happening with my former organization," she admitted uneasily. "I tried to raise several people, but I only was able to contact a source that has requested we pick her up. From the rest I only got a few discrete acknowledgments or no response at all."

Aaliyah exhaled. "I know why. Astrid and I met with a Shadow Broker representative on the Citadel. They swear they did not want to make an enemy out of the Compact, and as proof they gave us a dossier on Cerberus."

Miranda's eyes flashed: "How complete is it?"

"Enough to get a gist of how big the operation is, but they held onto the really juicy morsels. Like, who's who and where are they based on."

"They have caught wind of that, somehow," Lawson replied forcefully. "Now it's official, I'm burned all the way."

Shepard leaned against a wall. "So you suggest we should hurry up and grab this source, without the Citadel learning of it? It would be highly suspicious."

"I know, but that's not the sole reason. A report sent to me before the Council's ruling just arrived. There has been an incident in Pragia."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ Zenyatta's parables are Zen koans, they're not mine by any stretch.

Starting today, I'm writing Codex entries for content relevant to each chapter. You may want to go back to the first episode and check the stuff about the Moon.

Many thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for their proofreading work. That they've been putting up with me for so long only means I'm all the more grateful for it.


	28. Citadel: Strings

Erinyes station

"I have a request," Shepard asked as Garrus walked in.

"What is it?" Vakarian asked warily in turn.

"Some rather delicate business came up on my side. I need to take the Starwatch crew with me and see to it."

The Turian held her gaze briefly. "And that is something you would prefer to keep away from Citadel eyes." Aaliyah clenched her jaw, but Garrus stopped her: "If it isn't something that the Council should know, I can live with that."

"Not for the moment," Shepard replied carefully. "If that changes I will let you in on it."

A reluctant nod, then he raised his eyebrows: "Are you sure you want to risk getting sidetracked? What if we get a fix on Saren's location and you're not around?"

That was a point on which the Starwatch colonel had dwelt for a while, unable to find a satisfactory solution. "I know," she said slowly and sharply. "I don't like pulling need-to-know on you either, but it's delicate."

That elicited a grunt. "I have an alternative for you," he offered. "We ship together, as a backup squad. We stay out of the way, confined to our quarters, unless you or your deputy call for us explicitly."

Shepard sat on the single stool available in her quarters. "It's going to cause rumbles."

Vakarian shrugged. "It was bound to happen eventually. Best if we come up with a protocol to deal with such situations now."

* * *

Omega

'The dark twin of the Citadel.' In such… ominous? Clichéd? Shepard could not quite pin the character of the words Zaeed Massani had used to describe the place to her. _What was it that he said? This place is a hellhole, but it doesn't pretend it's anything else._

It had been decided that they would rely on the mercenary to arrange the contact and spot whatever traps and ambushes laid for them, in a nod to his excellent performance on Illium and his intimate knowledge of the Terminus underworld, which in many ways was the only world there was on those rough, lawless planets.

Massani's description was spot on. The place was huge — not to the point of the Citadel, but huge nonetheless, and everything had jagged edges to it. The wall fittings and bulkheads were rough, not the kind of thing that would be expected to be airtight, and looked just like they were about one or two kicks away from structural collapse. The air was breathable… after a fashion, that was, heavily saturated with pollution and stinking of trash and sweat and dirty bodies. Down in the commercial district there were signs and lights everywhere, but little order to them, and the streets were packed uncomfortably tight.

And everyone was armed. Even the puniest sidearm in view was something she would not like to confront except from behind her squadshield. Locals came in all sizes and shapes, but they more or less fit into the roles she had already kind of learned to expect. Krogan were bullies, almost always hired muscle, mercenaries. Turians were sharp professionals instead of boisterous brutes, and, if not also hired guns, most often players in whatever trade they plied. Batarians tended to stick together, but not exclusively, shifty types either working as guards or trafficking something. Salarians quite often were entrepreneurs or smugglers, and she seldom saw one without armed guards. Asari were everywhere: dancers, adventurers, escorts even, but a token few defied labeling, and her experience told her they were the ones to beware here.

"Only one rule here," Massani had said. "You don't fuck with Aria."

And the local humans? Shepard had made it a point to keep an eye out for any faces. She had not seen many. It was easy to mistake an Asari for a woman when they were wearing a closed helmet, which some did.

 _Mistaking Asari for women… is that what I'm doing?_ Her mind went back to Liara. Her hairs stood on end as she did. It had been awkward, borderline uncomfortable and outright embarrassing for the young blue-skinned girl.

And it had been intoxicating.

She stared into the bottom of her glass, the penumbra of this night club making that a difficult exercise.

 _What am I doing?_

It was not the question someone would ask herself in shock and horror. No, she was honestly puzzled by her reactions, unable to understand herself and her newly discovered… xenophilia?

 _What is it like for others?_ Surely some of the people in contact with the Asari emigres — so far the only people born in Citadel space willing to move into Alliance territory, and given their reputation as xenophiles and the allure of their unique mating practices, perfect spies, and triply watched because of that — had experienced what she had experienced herself with Liara.

 _I should talk it over with Ziegler,_ she worried. She had a brief moment to recall Navy regulations on fraternization. The cold, hard truth was that she had grossly violated them when she had… had… _intercourse_ with both Valena and Liara — a prosecutor would call it that, any other word just fancy dressing —, but Hackett had been on the very room where she had reported the results of her first melding, and he had not said a single word. Her second joining had been prompted by the same urgencies that had called for the first. Odd, wasn't it, what the fates of nations often rode on.

But her latest tryst with Liara had not obeyed to that.

 _Why didn't it feel like this when I melded with Valena?_

 _Why is this bitch taking so goddamned long?_

She had been nursing that drink for hours on already. Any attempt at concealing that she was waiting for someone had long since been blown. The local patrons could tell. So could the Batarian bartender. A tired glance at the door, and she spotted the black armor of Reyes. The assassin was not looking her way.

How would this play out? What was taking so much time? Would some stranger come out of the blue and hand her some tip? Or a tablet computer? Or someone would drop it conveniently next to her? Or would her omni-tool buzz?

That would find its answer when a Turian stopped briefly by her table, left a bag on the empty chair opposite hers, and walked away without a word.

"What is that?" Miranda's voice spoke on her earbud. She was elsewhere on the same night club, and had direct sight to Shepard's table from her own.

"A canister or container of some kind," Shepard hazarded after a quick scan. It was not exposed, but she could guess at the contents of the bag from its shape. "Reyes?"

"Already on my way," came the hoarse reply. There was no one better suited than him for figuring out what the package was.

With slow and bored motions, she drained the rest of her drink and waited. The assassin did not take long to reach her table. With well concealed caution, her keen eye noted, he grabbed the bag and put it over his lap as he sat. A holographic screen popped up at once and prompted him for a drink, and he actually spent some time studying it.

A scarce minute later the Batarian bartender came over with a bottle, then left after pouring the beverage without a word.

Shepard interrogated Reyes with a glance: _Well?_

He did not react at first. He took a long draught of his drink, then after a second he said nonchalantly, "This is it."

She bobbed her head, in part to conceal her puzzlement: _Weren't we supposed to pick someone up?_

When they emerged on the street they got three different 'all clear' signals: one from Miranda behind them, another from a cloaked Widowmaker perched atop the archway leading to the docks, and a third from Zaeed, who appeared to be haggling with a street vendor. Shepard followed Reyes as he turned left, entering the main commercial boulevard and wondering where he was taking her.

Their detour took them to a small shipping company — whose logo was also stenciled on the bag, she belatedly realized. She observed her partner had some semblance of familiarity with the place, because he handed over the bag to the Batarian behind the desk, under the watchful eyes of a couple of Turian mercenary guards, only for the clerk to go back into the vaults and return with a small package that he immediately gave to Reyes. This he checked out briefly, then he handed over to her in turn.

The package was a plastic box for storing small valuables, nothing fancy. She stowed it on a pouch by her waist, thanked the employee with a gesture of her hand, then she followed Reyes out. The man walked her through the commercial district, turning at random three times, then he walked into something resembling a workers' diner, for the patrons were all disheveled and ill-kempt, but not the kind of dregs she thought that would inhabit a homeless shelter, if there was one to begin with in this merciless place.

"You seem to know Omega well," she noted neutrally, the comment an elliptic question about the years he had spent wandering the galaxy.

"Been here before," he accepted, as neutrally. He smelled the air briefly, then ordered two servings of some local stew. She did not even dare to ask what kind of meat was that, but he motioned at her to dig in, which she did. It was a pleasant surprise:

"What is this?"

"A Vorcha dish," he answered quietly. "Closest you're going to get to proper food in this place. Safe, too."

For a moment she almost forgot about her package. "It is good," she approved. Then, as if it were a second thought, she reached for the box and opened it. The contents were a small, round device with a flat base, and a simple memory card that she at once punched into her omni-tool.

Her onboard AI was still scanning the contents of the memory card when a girlish voice spoke on her earbuds: "It took you long enough to get here."

"Coming any faster would have drawn unwanted attention," she retorted dryly in annoyance. That this girl had so effortlessly bypassed every layer of cyberwarfare defense on her suit vexed her. "Where are you?"

"Oh, _por ahí,_ " the voice said with a smug undertone. "Making sure no one's on your tail." Then the voice became serious. "This station is crawling with people looking for me. They are onto Miranda, by the way. You did well by ditching her."

"Some of her fellows?"

" _Así es._ They're going squirrely. But I can tell you about that once we're aboard your ship."

"Good plan," she approved, keeping a discreet eye on the patrons around. "Where do we meet?"

"Go back aboard and deploy that beacon somewhere close to an airlock," the voice instructed. "And keep at least one of the hatch doors open."

Aaliyah knotted her brow, but Reyes gave her a nod. Clearly he knew what this contact was up to.

"Alright, will do."

The way back to the docks was straightforward, as opposed to the convoluted walk that had taken them to the diner. The rest of the squad that had went ashore was already back aboard and waiting for her, with Zaeed leaning against a wall on the the corridor adjacent to the airlock and with Miranda and Amélie standing near the opposite wall.

Shepard scanned their faces and wondered if again Massani had harassed Widowmaker, but that would have to wait. She gestured at them to be alert, then produced the round beacon from her hip satchel and planted it on the floor, right next to the inner hatch.

Then they waited.

And suddenly, a blue lightning flashed, and the shape of an Asari popped right into existence over the beacon.

Everyone but for Reyes and Lacroix almost had a stroke: "What the hell?!" Shepard gasped.

The newcomer glanced at Reyes and Lacroix alternatively: "You didn't tell her?" The question was met with shrugs. " _Oh, bueno._ No harm done, I guess." A glance at Massani: "I thought you had seen this once, _señor Zaeed._ "

Aaliyah was briefly in overload, then her judgment took over. Clearly it was some variation of the hardlight gate technology she had used herself, even if she could not even begin to fathom how much more refined it had to be to work with just that beacon.

But the thing that really worried her was that such tech was in the hands of an alien: "I hope you can tell us where and how you got that." _And where did you pick up your Spanish…_

The newcomer again glanced at Gabriel: "You have played coy, haven't you." A giggle, then in the span of instants, what had looked like an Asari fully decked in light armor darkened and sprouted hair, to become a brown-skinned girl clad in some decidedly strange and sophisticated-looking purple-black dress, and with a series of metal bands running over the shaved half of her scalp. And with no visible effort on her part.

Reyes laughed hoarsely at the utterly shocked and flabbergasted faces of Shepard, Miranda and Massani. "You sure know how to make an entrance."

Sombra clucked her tongue. "You only get one shot at making a first impression."

"Why are you here?" Lacroix asked quietly. "It can't be good news."

" _Así es_ , _señorita Amelia._ It's not good news. Actually I wanted to remain inside Cerberus but that risked exposing too many of my secrets."

Miranda managed to regain some composure. She glared at Reyes with slightly narrowing eyes: _You were keeping this from me all the time, weren't you._ "Would you please update me on that count?"

"We have time for that. But the clock is ticking to see what happened on Pragia. Supposing you're still interested in that, _coronel_ Shepard."

"We had already taken that into account," was Aaliyah's slow reply. _You and I are going to have a long talk_. "Lena, you have the conn. Get us out of here."

"Aye aye, luv," came the reply over the speakers.

She turned back to Sombra: "What do you know about that yourself?"

"The Cerberus _hombres_ received a distress signal from that place," was the answer. "It would seem that the test subjects have rioted." She eyed Shepard sharply. "How many know about this escapade?"

"Back at Erinyes some know that we left," was the answer as she thought about Palukhina and Chakwas. "But that's it. I suppose I'm about to learn it was a good thing I didn't tell anyone else."

The hacker looked all around herself slowly and carefully, her eyes scanning the bulkheads and lights, before answering: " _Así es._ Cerberus has very powerful sponsors. Some of those are a few of the Alliance joint chiefs… and her father." She pointed at Miranda, who looked back impassively. "They've been funneling men and funds into it since your adventure on Pokhara."

 _Hackett's superiors… then Cerberus knows everything Starwatch is doing inside the Compact… and they ordered Lawson, Reyes and Lacroix into our outfit, along with their men…_ She went pale. "Which joint chiefs are implicated?"

Sombra shrugged. "Are you sure you want to know? What are you going to do about it? Cerberus is an officially sanctioned Alliance operation. As black as black operations come, but sanctioned nonetheless."

"I'll be the judge of that."

The dark-skinned girl slightly shook her head in refusal, her eyes narrowing. " _No, no lo creo._ I informed about Pragia because there's a chance you will find something you need there, but the more I let you in on Cerberus, the worse off you will be. I mean, we both know you're going to follow the trail all the way, _¿no es así?_ And your brass won't like it."

Shepard held onto her temper as she ran the options in her head. She could detain the woman and interrogate her extensively, but her logic was rock-solid. Sure thing, she was one of the top Starwatch operatives, but a direct intervention from the joint chiefs could change that in an instant and that would wreck everything. To unravel this conspiracy she would have to play it smart and extremely carefully—

 _And that's none of my business right now. It's enough that I know not to step on their toes._ "Alright, you have a point."

Dakka system - Nubian Expanse

"Shite." Tracer studied the ladar output fed by Mercy's sensors straight into her augmented reality headset. "It's gotten lively there."

Shepard could only agree with her. The Nubian Expanse was closer to Hegemony territory, a fact that, for all their hatred of all things Alliance, had not stopped them from noticing that investing time and resources on these worlds would yield mediocre returns at best. They still considered it a buffer zone of sorts between them and the human-omnic combine, a region their haphazard collection of unsanctioned operatives and criminal retainers used to lair about.

That was a partial explanation for the twenty-odd ships orbiting Pragia, but an insufficient one, especially since it was clear that a pitched, chaotic skirmish was taking place.

"Power down the reactor," Tracer instructed Mercy. "Rig ship for ultraquiet."

"Yes, Lena." At once most lights turned off and most screens switched to a low power setting. To rig a ship for ultraquiet was an expression borrowed from ancient submariner lingo: back then, it was performed by killing the engines, powering down everything non-essential and having everyone shut the hell up, until a tomb resembled a den of libertines in comparison with the sub. Even the best passive sonars had a hard time finding a submarine that radiated no noise, so in this fashion the ship was effectively rendered invisible.

Nowadays it was done slightly differently; sound was not important anymore, but radiated heat was, so reactor output was chopped down to its absolute minimum to allow for temporary diversion of waste heat into sinks, instead of venting it into space. As the _Girls' Night Out_ was an upgunned civilian corvette, able to punch above its weight but not to absorb punishment in the same measure, attracting the wrong kind of attention would do them no good, which made this ultraquiet routine a sensible call.

"Which of those are Cerberus ships?" Shepard asked, her eyes on the monitor where the passive sensor arrays presented their collected output, now that the hologram projector had had to be turned off.

Miranda stared at the screen, thinking. "Hegemony ships aside, those are all mercenary crews. Cerberus almost never relies on them. On the rare occasion when they were necessary I used to subcontract them through Zaeed."

Heads turned to look at Massani. "There's a bunch I like, an outfit led by a Turian out of Omega, but they can't duke it out with the big boys yet," he said hoarsely. "I'd go with Eclipse guys for this place. They're the least likely to screw you over."

Aaliyah nodded. "We need to get down there without being seen." _And fast,_ she did not add, but she needed not saying anything about their urgencies. "Lena? Layali?"

"I can make it fast, or make it quiet," was Tracer's reply. "But fast _and_ quiet, it's going to be a problem, luv."

The Starwatch colonel clenched her jaw, and turned towards Miranda: "You think all this mess is because of what's going on in the Cerberus base?"

She pursed her lips with the tip of her tongue. "The installation is underground. The standard emergency protocol is to seal the base off from the surface by demolishing the elevator shafts, and to send a distress signal back to HQ. Once it's isolated, the complex is built to be entirely self-sustaining. It can generate its own oxygen and foodstuffs."

Shepard bowed her head, thinking. Miranda's words meant there was a chance the complex still was still unbreached, but the presence of both mercenaries and Hegemony troops implied the place was not a secret installation anymore. And, consequently, the race was on.

"We'll make it fast, then," she decided. _So much for subtlety._ "Action stations." At once the lighting switched back on, but it was strident red instead of sterile white, as alarms blared all over the ship. Synthesized voices rang on the speakers, commanding the crew to man their posts.

"Aye, fast it is." Tracer eased herself on the pilot seat. There was a low rumble as the powerful engines propelling the _Girls' Night Out_ roared and the corvette pounced forward, pilot and AI steering it as further away as they could from other ships.

Detection, though, was inevitable. "Someone is trying to scan us," Mercy warned. "Tracing." A second and a half later she added: "It's a Hegemony destroyer."

Shepard glanced at the ladar output. There was a gaggle of mercenary ships between that destroyer and their own. "Ignore it," she ordered. This far, only guided ordnance represented a hazard, and it was nothing they could not counter, either by means of cyberwarfare or point defenses.

"They're not following," Mercy informed, then reported in quick succession: "Two other vessels are changing vector and are now on an intercept course, Blood Pack and Blue Suns corvettes."

 _Business,_ Shepard thought at once.

"Get me torpedo firing solutions for both," Amari ordered, as acting gunnery officer.

"I don't like those numbers," Anika said quietly. "They have a lot of friends."

"If they all follow us to the surface, they'll be a lot to deal with," the jumpjet trooper countered dryly.

"Warn them off," Shepard ordered, with a glance at Martinsson. "They get one chance. They waste it, we splash 'em."

"Roger." Astrid waited until Mercy had opened a broadcast channel for her, then she spoke: "Approaching vessels, this is the corvette _Girls' Night Out._ You are blocking our flight path. Change your course or you will be fired upon. You have sixty seconds to comply."

Seconds trickled by slowly and tensely as they watched the ladar output and the two icons closed in on them.

"Torpedoes are dialed in," Amari reported.

Shepard glanced briefly at Sombra. The hacker's eyes were looking in the way of the hologram projector and the many icons that danced in Pragia's shadow, but at times they seemed to lose their focus. She was thinking about something, and for a moment it appeared she would speak up, but she did not.

"Fire."

The corvette shook slightly as its ordnance bay opened briefly and two torpedoes were ejected. The missiles corkscrewed around and hurtled after their targets.

"Everyone, suit up," the Starwatch colonel ordered next. "Whether we get those or not, whoever wins the skirmish will be coming in after us, supposing the Batarians don't. Tracer, punch it!"

"Aye, ma'am."

She tapped her omni-tool next: "Garrus, the local space is crawling with mercs and there's Hegemony ships around. Keeping you in the loop."

"I knew it couldn't be that you just felt like testing our torpedoes," the Turian answered deadpan. "Are we making a run for the surface?"

"Yeah. I would suit up if I were you."

"We'll do that. Thanks for the heads-up. Are you going to need our help once we get down there?"

"You'll drop us and then take off again and find a place to hide the ship. Get ready."

Behind Shepard, Miranda held her breath, then exhaled slowly. Her eyes were on a screen depicting captures from the surface of the planet.

"They've beaten us to it."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ Short chapter, but I had to cut it from the expedition into the Teltin facility or it would have gotten humongous.

Kudos go to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for their help.


	29. Citadel: Subject Zero

Pragia

Thin, bright lines cut through the rain-heavy clouds in the night sky, erupting from sites hidden beneath the canopy to reach out and occasionally touch some object that then blossomed into a fireball.

Then the answer would come, a burning comet to pound at one of the anti-aircraft sites, and a cloud of smoke and dust would rise from the impact.

"Those defenses won't hold them back for long," Layali noted.

"Best if we make the best out of the opportunity." Miranda was sitting in front of a console, typing commands.

"Is the skirmish up in orbit over?" Anika pondered.

"Looks like," Zaeed replied grimly. "Those can't work together. They'd be so damn paranoid they wouldn't get shit done, fearing that the others would stab them in the back. And trying to stab them first."

"That can play in our favor," Lawson replied. A minute later, a message appeared on her console. "We're cleared to move in."

Amari eyed her with suspicion. "How come your clearances still work? Weren't you burned?"

Miranda did not give her so much as a glance. "I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth."

Sombra was observing without saying a word. Shepard knew better than watching her continuously, but the hacker's presence on her ship made little sense. She looked more than capable of looking after herself, an impression confirmed by how Reyes and Lacroix seemed to avoid her. And she had volunteered precious little. _Something's brewing with Cerberus, and she claims 'I'm better off not knowing'?_

Then the dark-skinned girl glanced at Aaliyah and smiled a cool-eyed smile, very much aware of her thoughts.

More carefully than a hunter approaching a nest of vipers, Tracer brought her ship low enough to skim the treetops, then slowly hovered towards the bunker and the silo doors.

A low rumble caused the canopy to tremble beneath them. A cloud of small flying animals took to the skies screaming.

"Localized earthquake," Mercy reported automatically. "Estimate magnitude 4.3."

Miranda was uneasy about that. "One reason this region was picked for the installation was that it was seismically stable."

"So what could have caused it?" Anika asked.

"Human or alien activity," Shepard answered at once. "Especially if they're fighting down there for control of the installation. Except that…"

"An explosion that powerful would have caused the whole facility to collapse," Astrid finished for her.

" _Oh, no lo creo,_ " Sombra commented absently. "Only very precise orbital bombardment could destroy that place. _Además,_ those who built it kept in mind that a 'test subject'—" she accented the words "—could go nuts."

An alarm suddenly rang as Tracer yelled: "Hold on to something!"

The ship swerved brusquely to starboard as Lena took a sharp turn, trying to evade the missiles fired at their ship: "Incoming ordnance, bearing two-one-one," Mercy reported.

"Take the wheel and drop us on a flyby over the LZ!" Shepard ordered. "Layali, you cover us!"

* * *

A burst of railgun fire intercepted the missiles streaking for the _Girls' Night Out._ "You're in the clear," Layali informed. "Maybe it's redundant on my part, but hurry. Every second here means the zone gets hotter."

"I know," Aaliyah acknowledged her. "Lacroix, you're on overwatch duty."

" _Compris._ " There was an element of irony in that: the most feared Talon sniper providing cover for the offspring of an Overwatch legend.

"The rest of us, on me. Let's get in there."

The entrance to the installation was nothing but a giant pair of silo-like doors, large enough for their ship to land on what undoubtedly was some sort of underground landing pad, except that these were closed. The only other structure in view was an adjacent bunker, its walls blackened and charred. Smoke still rose from ashes and cooling embers all around the place.

Miranda's clearances got the solid blast door on the bunker open for them. A pair of huge sentry guns were installed on the security checkpoint immediately behind the door, but neither reacted to their presence.

Shepard went over their briefing again. "What should we expect?" She had asked Lawson.

"Sentry drones, stationary gun emplacements, and elite security. The people here are committed and skilled professionals."

The bunker was small. It only had a couple of rooms for the guards supposed to man the checkpoint, the stores, a scarily well-stocked armory, and the elevators.

"No power, but the shafts are intact," Aaliyah noted. "I thought the protocol was to destroy them…"

Astrid continued from where she had left off. "…but there's still some triple-A operational, so whoever or whatever is in charge decided it was premature to blow everything up. Am I right?"

For a moment, Miranda did not answer, her attention focused on a console. "Power for this grid is offline," she informed mechanically. "It's been diverted to the anti-aircraft guns."

Sombra touched the panel next to the elevator doors, which opened with a metallic groan. The shaft was pitch black.

Tracer stepped forward, stretched her neck out and looked below. "That looks deep… fifty-odd meters, give or take."

"Fifty-three," Miranda nodded.

"I'll go in first," Reyes murmured, and simply walked into the shaft. The darkness swallowed him.

Moments later, he reported: "Clear." Then: "But nobody home, it seems."

He took a good look around. There was another security checkpoint immediately next to the elevator, nearly identical to the one they had just left behind, except that there were no sentry guns deployed this time. But for some tiny red dots here and there denoting backup power for some devices, the darkness was near absolute.

"No power here either," he informed next.

"Not necessary. I can help you down that shaft," Lawson said stiffly. It struck Shepard as odd, and she scanned her guardedly for a whole second. The brunette woman was extremely good at masking her feelings and thoughts, but Aaliyah's intuition told her that —perhaps— the more of a coldly precise machine she appeared to be, the tenser she actually was.

"Everyone at once?"

"No. Two at a time, at most."

The Starwatch colonel bowed her head and thought for a bit. "Genji and Tracer, you go first."

" _Wakarimasu._ "

"Aye, luv."

By the time the whole squad had made it down the shaft, the two Overwatch legends and their erstwhile nemesis had already cleared out the checkpoint and the hall behind it. It was almost pitch black. Shepard turned on her lamp and started looking for signs on the walls.

Then the lights turned on on their own. Automatically everyone raced for cover, but a speaker somewhere came to life: "Miss Lawson? Is that you?"

"That's a rather obvious question, doctor Archer," was the deadpan reply. "What's your status?"

The voice took a while to reply: "Our security chief here says you aren't part of Cerberus anymore."

"My authorization codes disagree with you, doctor," she retorted dryly. "Whether or not I'm on the payroll, we got here first. But if we are unwelcome, we can always turn around and leave." _And leave you in the hands of the mercs, of course._

"No, no, of course not," Archer stammered, then said in a rush: "We have power, but to isolate and contain the riot we cut life support to some sectors and sealed them off. We are all holed up in hydroponics."

"How many are there with you?"

"37, between staff and guards."

Nobody missed how Miranda paled. "Understood. Hang in there. We will quell the riot, then move to evacuate you. We're going to need full admin clearances to restore or cut power to sectors and manage security." Sombra made a dismissive gesture upon hearing that. A few moments of silence followed, then Miranda added with a note of anger in her voice: "You want us to help or not?"

"Yes, yes… Hold on a second." Then: "It's done. Just… be very careful there. Subject Zero trashed everything and everyone that got in her way. Check out the camera feeds and see it for yourself."

"Thanks for the warning, doctor. We'll be in touch."

Everyone stared at the former Cerberus lieutenant. "Subject Zero?" Anika asked.

"I'm looking that up." Miranda was tapping commands into her own omni-tool. A few instants later, the portable computer presented a holographic file depicting a bald girl.

"That's… basic." Ziegler frowned. The description was annoyingly laconic. Female, 17 years old, 47.200 kilograms, 162cm tall, blood type AB+.

"The research notes should be more detailed." She selected one at random and tapped at the attached video recording. It showed the girl strapped—no, _manacled_ to a lone chair in a large room, a multitude of suction cups with cables attached all over her body. A series of weights and barbells were piled on the other end of the room. There was a buzzing sound, and then the girl's face twisted as she struggled not to scream—and the weights turned into lethal missiles hurled every which way.

"What… what is this?" Tracer paled in shock. "That's how they unlocked biotics? By _torturing_ their test subjects?"

Horror and anger rippled through the squad. "I didn't know," was all that Lawson could say.

"But you _should_ know!" Lena bellowed. "You're a bloody biotic yourself! Did they do the same to you?"

"No, it wasn't like that… it was never like that for me, I had instructors and training programs."

"And to develop and perfect those programs they had to experiment on subjects like this one." Genji was quiet, but his eyes were smoldering coals fixated on Miranda.

Lawson glared angrily at him. "Nothing can be done about that now. This place was tasked with cracking biotics at all costs. A price had to be paid. If you want, you can have it at me all you want later. Right now we have a mission. We can continue talking or we can get on with it."

Reyes snorted. "Hindsight is always 20/20."

Shepard had also been perturbed by the recording, but she could not argue the point. "She's right," she said reluctantly. "We will get to the bottom of this, but we have work to do first. Which way?"

Miranda pointed down the hall. "The corridor on that end leads to the genetics lab, and thence to the living quarters for test subjects and the training halls."

Sombra grinned. "I wonder what kinds of things we'll see on the way."

"I'm sure you already know," Gabriel muttered.

"Reyes, you take the rear," Shepard ordered. "Oxton and Shimada, you are on point. The rest, on me."

* * *

The end of the corridor between the entrance hall and the genetics lab was sealed by a sturdy blast door, further secured by means of a powerful shield.

"The lab has been depowered and depressurized," Miranda noted. "Hold on. I need a few seconds."

Anika approached the humming barrier of bluish energy. She tapped her omni-tool twice and held her hand over the shield. "This is a cruiser-grade kinetic barrier," she observed. "I'm not sure, but I believe not even maximum security prisons deploy barriers like this."

Sombra crossed her arms. "Cerberus deemed the research done here to be far more important than any inmate in any prison."

Genji glanced briefly at the hacker, then admitted uneasily: "I wouldn't blame them. Not after facing off against Tela Vasir and miss Lawson."

At that moment, there was a deep rumble, and the floor quivered again. The echoes of metal groaning under the strain reached them. Everyone tensed at that and waited for it to pass, then Ziegler inquired: "Mercy?"

"Another localized earthquake," the AI informed. "Estimate magnitude 4.2. I believe the epicenter is somewhere in the holding area for test subjects."

Shepard looked at Miranda. "Let me guess. Subject Zero."

Before the brunette woman could reply, there was a series of hisses and snapping sounds, and the door slowly opened sideways. Chaos and carnage greeted them on the other side. Corpses were strewn across the floor and smashed into the bulkheads — security guards, scientists, and test subjects alike. Sparks flew in a multitude of places, where explosions had wrecked lighting panels and machinery embedded on the walls.

"Holy shit… what happened here?" Shepard breathed.

Zaeed picked up a gun lying on the floor. "Talon pistol," he grunted in amusement at the irony. "The people here meant business." He tossed the sidearm at Tracer.

Lena examined it. "And they used this to put down the revolt?"

"I find it hard to believe," Aaliyah said slowly, "but if this Subject Zero is causing the quakes and trashed everything they threw at her, I get the feeling they needed even bigger guns."

Sombra was tapping commands on thin air. " _Esperen._ I'm looking for the security cam feeds." A few instants, and she uttered a triumphant: " _Sí._ "

Her omni-tool projected a screen filled with chaos. Two groups of guards had run down that corridor. The first ones had been armed with riot gear, but the second wave had escalated all the way to heavily armed troopers.

"How dangerous were the rioters that they demanded that kind of response?" Astrid wondered.

The image shifted to show the riot gear-outfitted guards clashing with a large group of inmates —there was no other word for it— on some internal courtyard of sorts. At first, it seemed like they could deal with the revolt all by themselves, but the rioters had then split into two groups, one of which kept the guards tied up. The others were biotics of diverse skill, and they had flung chairs, furniture, pieces of concrete at the guards, quickly overwhelming them.

Then the second wave of guards had been dispatched, and carnage had ensued. The fighting had been bloody, bitter and without quarter, but the armed troopers had been brutally efficient and merciless. In the end, only a knot of about half a dozen biotic inmates remained, their backs to a heavy blast door, and all their power poured onto a kinetic barrier that gunfire could not breach. A brief lull had ensued, and the officer in command of the troopers had demanded a surrender, only to be answered with more makeshift missiles.

The security troops had heavy weapons. Up to that point, the officer had been reluctant to use them, but the dogged resistance of the inmates finally changed his mind. A final warning had gone unheeded, and then the rocket launchers had been aimed and fired.

And right before impact, the inmates' barrier had blinked out.

Yellow alarm lights and warning klaxons had rung throughout the pitched battle, but as the rockets broke through the door and tore it apart, the warning lights turned red, and the guards' had gotten in each other's way to get out of the courtyard—right before there was a blast of blue and white and the recording stopped.

"They clearly knew what was behind that door," Lena noted. No one failed to notice the note of concern in her tone. Only a sneak attack or a trap had a chance of knocking Tracer out, as the incident on Illium had shown. But could she stop a biotic of such power?

Reyes knew how to read that tone. "We'll know soon enough," he commented hoarsely.

The lab itself was in an even worse shape. The exquisitely delicate machines used for genetic sampling and editing had been smashed to bits, the work tables upon which they had been set upturned, containers and boxes strewn every which way.

Anika approached two such boxes. Refined eezo had leaked out of one, and the other had contained some kind of red dust, of which only traces remained now.

"Red sand, I believe," she noted. "Someone scooped up most of it."

Reyes approached next. "There was a lot of it," he said as he held the container, now a useless hunk of metal. "Enough to put a hundred biotics in orbit."

Sombra took the box off Reyes' hands and sampled a bit of the dust. "Whoever cooked this knew what he was doing. Miss Lawson here could get higher than a flying kite with no permanent damage."

Zaeed grinned. "I could make a fortune out of that if I got the formula. Red sand with all the punch and none of the bite?"

"Except for the addictive potential, that is. Withdrawal would mess you up."

Shepard's mind involuntarily made a connection that sent shivers down her spine: "I get the feeling they got people hooked up for… No. Not for control. Addicts make poor test subjects," she thought out loud. "What could they be using it for?"

"I don't know as much about biotics as I should. Perhaps they used it to induce the awakening of biotic skills?" Anika shook her head. "Forget I said anything, it's just a shot in the dark."

A neighboring annex had apparently escaped the worst of the riots, for it was relatively tidy. Tall, cylindrical containers lined one wall, with the opposite one consisting of a series of large fridges. A series of work tables outfitted with medical machinery and some desktop terminals completed the picture.

"I've seen this before," Reyes murmured. "Lacroix had been put to sleep on a cylinder like those."

"So this is a cryogenic facility of some kind," Shepard ventured, struggling to conceal her unease. She noticed the dust on a work table. "Nobody's been here for a while. Odd."

Sombra approached a terminal, tapped her omni-tool a few times, and frowned. "This annex is independently powered… oh."

"What is it?"

Sombra's right hand hovered over her omni-tool, then she looked at Miranda. " _No mires, chica._ You won't like it."

Lawson frowned. "Why?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

Miranda gave the hacker an icy look. "If it was that bad, you should have kept it to yourself."

A shrug. "Don't say I didn't warn you." Another tap, then in unison, the protective metallic covers of the cylinders slid open, exposing their contents.

" _Bloody hell!"_ Tracer exploded. Everyone else was struck speechless.

But it was not the case with Miranda. The woman blanched, then slowly fell to her knees.

For each of the eight cylinders contained a perfect facsimile of her.

"Anika, talk to me," Shepard ordered tersely.

Sombra gestured at the medic. Ziegler approached her, and read the terminal output. "They are not exact clones, their DNA varies slightly between each other… I'm not sure… but if I'm reading this correctly… these were all successive iterations." After further reading, she added: "The last entry… was logged on October 21st, 2114… nineteen years ago."

"What was the purpose of the program?"

After a few seconds came the reply: "It's not clear at first glance… I may be wrong, but… it would appear that the goal was to achieve genetic perfection, combined with potential for great biotic skill…"

Shepard frowned. "Eugenics."

But Anika did not agree. "I'd say that, but… they always used the same DNA as a starting template, even after it was suggested that alternatives were used, in light of the extensive 'corrections' that were necessary."

Aaliyah approached the stricken Miranda, and softly laid a hand on her shoulder. Her face was frozen solid into an unmoving mask, eyes staring at the tanks without really seeing them. Cloning was not exactly news; the science behind it had been mastered over a century ago. That did not diminish the brutal impact of finding out that she was a clone herself.

There was yet more to follow: "Hold on… this doesn't make sense…" Anika kept reading for a few seconds: "It's as if they left that on purpose…"

"Later," the Starwatch colonel said brusquely, both out of a desire to have her team refocus on their mission, and to protect the catatonic Miranda. "This is not what we're here for. Download everything and we'll evaluate it later."

"Yes, ma'am."

Aaliyah softly shook the brunette woman's shoulder. "Miss Lawson, I'm sorry. But we have to go."

That simple gesture seemed to switch her back on. "Of course. Please excuse me." She turned on her heel and followed after Reyes without a word or a last look.

They retraced their steps back through the wrecked lab and moved on. At every point they came upon more evidence of the chaos that had raged there: bullet holes, wrecked machinery, broken power lines, and corpses of guards, scientists and test subjects alike. Shepard and her crew noticed this, but now there were no barbs directed at Miranda, who had apparently sought refuge into her professional guise; her motions were precise and sharp as she guided them through the wrecked compound.

Eventually they came upon the courtyard they had seen on the video Sombra had obtained from the mainframe. The hall was shrouded in a penumbra only occasionally perturbed by sparks flying here and there. A pile of corpses lay against a wall, blood seeping out staining the floor almost from end to end. On the other side, the blast door had been blown away. Nothing moved.

Not even they, except for Sombra. " _Ella no está aquí._ "

Shepard eyed her. "Where, then?" She whispered.

"She's been trying to dig her way out. Deep into the test subjects holding area."

Anika blinked. "So that's what the quakes are about?" Then she breathed out slowly in shock. "Just how strong a biotic is she?"

"Enough to warrant being designated as Subject Zero," Aaliyah muttered roughly. "Oxton and Reyes, you're on point. Get moving."

* * *

The 'test subjects holding area' was a prison in everything but name. Each of the tiny cells had once been sealed by impregnable sliding doors, but most of those were open now. At the end of the hall there had once been another cell, but now a passage had been blasted through the wall and into the bedrock that stretched on into the darkness.

Once again, the numb Miranda had had to reconnect the sector to the power and life support grids, as the place was dark as a tomb, and the oxygen levels were severely depleted. No one said out loud why it was like that, but the idea hovered on everyone's minds: that approach had been tried to contain the riot, and brutal as it was, it still had failed.

Gabriel and Lena spearheaded leapfrogging past each other, one covering the other as they went. That allowed them to spot it first:

"I got movement," Reyes whispered. "Someone is coming down the tunnel." He gestured at Tracer behind him.

The tunnel ahead did not appear to be straight, for the bluish glow that reached them seemed to come from around a corner, and after a few seconds, a bald girl appeared. She was surrounded by a translucent bubble of blue light, her body completely naked and ablaze from head to toe, but her movements were erratic and drunkenly. Oxygen deprivation was taking its toll, Ziegler thought at first, but then she noticed how her face and hands were smudged with red dirt.

 _Be very careful!_ She texted over the squad network. _She's probably taken some of that red sand!_

 _More like most of it, doc,_ was Reyes' reply.

Still, unsteady as her gait was, her face was not. She seemed intent on reaching their location. Had she spotted them, Shepard thought — then realized that when the life support systems had kicked back on, the air had quite likely freshened enough for the girl to notice it.

She had had time enough during their tour through the devastated research complex to think how to deal with her, but she had not found a satisfactory answer. A simple enough solution was to have Oxton or Reyes knock her out and drag her out of there, but the moment she regained consciousness she would go berserk — which would of course be bad news if it happened aboard their ship. Killing her would not help anyone, and she was not about to murder someone whose life had been enough of a hell already. And simply trying to talk to this girl could very well end with most of them ground to fine red paste.

Could Miranda parry her attacks? She knew from her meldings with Liara and Valena that it was possible for skilled biotics to deflect or block incoming strikes, but the likelihood of that depended on the strength of the attack — and if Lawson's power proved insufficient then she would be swatted aside like a fly.

She stole another glance at the girl, peering cautiously from behind cover, and noticed how emaciated she was, her ribs clearly visible. _No way that girl weighs a hundred pounds… when did she eat for the last time?_

Shepard's mind was torn between two thoughts now. One, this biotic prodigy could crush them without effort. Two, she was too weak to fight on for long.

But she herself had been pushed to that limit, back on Earth, when she had taken the Interplanetary Combatives Training course. It had taken all of her willpower to keep on going, and she had been a trained and hardened soldier. This girl had none of those advantages.

So she gambled. After a warning look and a gesture at Miranda, which she acknowledged with a nod, she stood up and turned on the headlamps on her armor.

Immediately the bald, naked girl's eyes flashed at her. Without call, cry or warning, she raised a crackling fist, then punched forward. Lawson saw the attack coming, advanced one step, and loosed a riposte, looking to drive a wedge through the incoming wave of force—

—but for all her skill and superior perception, she could not even begin to hope to counter the overwhelming strength of the biotic girl's onslaught. The attack blew her away, knocking down Shepard behind her, and sending Miranda herself flying some ten-odd steps; her kinetic barrier absorbed part of the attack, but the assault still was powerful enough to smash her against a wall and knock the breath out of her lungs.

The biotic strode towards the prone Shepard. Aaliyah looked up, saw her coming at her — and all she could do was to roll backward and out of the way, still aware that it would not protect her from another assault—

There was a flash, and Tracer blinked into existence right next to the bubble surrounding the naked girl, and then another flash as she vanished where she stood. The crackling fist aimed at her struck bedrock instead. A deafening blast, and the makeshift passageway started to cave in. Anika shouted a warning, but Lena had already reacted and hauled off Shepard to safety before she was buried under the rubble. They thought for a second that their attacker had suffered that fate, but then another thunderous explosion had the Starwatch crew duck behind cover to avoid the deadly hail of debris, and she emerged from the collapsed tunnel, still surrounded by the bubble and ablaze in blue.

Both Gabriel and Lena understood that this was not the time for subtleties. Tracer drew her machine pistols and fired at the biotic again and again, each time blinking between places — and that only made the girl angrier as she hurled attack after attack at her without success: bricks, rocks, pieces of concrete, even the heavy doors to the cells, anything was good. But not good enough.

Lena's guns were not good enough either. Nor was Reyes' signature move, as the biotic's barrier simply pushed his nanites away, and solidifying and shooting her would only get him blasted to bits: only Tracer was fast and nimble enough to evade her strikes. Both Aaliyah and Astrid saw this and hurled their hardlight casters at Lena, who snatched them on the fly and pointed them at the biotic. Twin streams of light wove a deadly cat's cradle around their attacker—

—only to end with Lena unceremoniously smashing herself against a wall when everything and everyone around the biotic became weightless and started hovering, as the bubble that surrounded her became thinner and expanded outwards. The girl clenched her teeth, fists bumped together as she irately regarded the helpless Tracer.

 _A null gravity field…_

Shepard knew then that they had lost.

 _Fuck me,_ she thought bitterly, knowing that it was her gross misjudgment that was going to get them all killed. _What a stupid way to go._

"Wait!" she yelled. "Take me, but let them—" she was cut mid-sentence by a blast the biotic threw her way without looking. She saw a wall approach her so fast she could not even blink—

—but then, as suddenly as she had been struck, she froze in midair, weightless again. She went numb with relief for a moment, thinking that she had managed to get through to the biotic, but that idea died quickly as she saw her still focused on Tracer, ignorant of what just had happened to her—

—then, out of the blue, Sombra materialized, turned ablaze with blue-greenish fire herself, and loosed a shower of kinetic bolts on their attacker, catching her completely by surprise. The bolts threw her around like a ragdoll, as if a boxer was mercilessly bearing down on a winded opponent, and the last such strike actually knocked her out cold exactly like an uppercut would as it took her under the chin.

Shepard hit the ground with all the grace of a sack of potatoes and needed a few instants to catch her breath and stand back up on her feet.

"You fucking bitch," she heard Reyes say in the way of Sombra. "So on top of everything you can also bend spoons."

Miranda was astounded enough herself that she had momentarily forgotten her shell shock: "How did you manage that?"

The hacker smirked mischievously. "A lady must have her secrets."

"Bullshit." For once Shepard was glad to have Reyes around. "You've had a few helpings of blue flesh, haven't you."

" _Y, eso ayuda,_ " Sombra conceded, acknowledging that cannibalizing an Asari had helped her develop that capability. "But there's more to it. Before getting here I didn't dare to do any more than scaring up people. You know, Silthea's gimmick."

Lawson kept her eyes on Sombra. "You needed accurate information on the exact workings of biotics."

Ziegler was dumbstruck, having pieced some of what was being said and unable to believe it. "How?" was all she could say.

"The answer, doc," Gabriel quipped, "is on that nifty staff you're lugging around. What does it do?"

"It's a nanite dispensing system… the nanites reconstitute tissue…" Anika was already numb with shock, and even so, this new discovery managed to jolt her again. "So that's… that's what happened to you? My mother—"

"She meant well. Much more than the asshole I was deserved. Let's just leave it at that for now."

Martinsson approached Shepard. "Lady Doomfist? You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, never been better," she joked acidly, having heard the whole exchange and deciding it merited further analysis, but now she directed her gaze at the unconscious biotic that had very nearly killed them. "How do we deal with her?"

"I can manage that." Reyes approached Subject Zero, turned her limp body face down, and literally shoved his fingers into the back of her neck. Everyone was greatly disquieted by that, except for Sombra. The hacker was bobbing her head in approval.

"What have you done to her?" Shepard asked, having inferred something but not quite sure.

"She will only be able to move if I agree to it."

" _Muy inteligente, señor Reyes._ " She then explained to the others: "She can't move her limbs if her nerves are intercepted."

"No limb movement means poor biotics control," Miranda informed mechanically.

"But not _no biotics,_ " Aaliyah asked.

Sombra shook her head. "That can't be helped."

"You know, girl, I have a question for you," Reyes asked, turning to face the hacker. "If you can already do biotics yourself, why bother with this? She goes nuts aboard the ship, she's going to get us all killed."

The hacker's smugness turned into unease. "While you have a point… this girl was not created like _señorita Lawson_ over there. I copied biotics by munching on an Asari and scarfing on eezo like it was _chile con carne,_ but true mastery needs training and a degree of fine control only a biological interface can achieve."

"By ' _munching on an Asari',_ " Shepard repeated deadpan.

Sombra eyed her coolly. " _No asesiné a nadie, coronel._ She was after a bounty on my head. She lost."

"I guess Silthea tried to bite more than what she could chew." Reyes smirked grimly at his own choice of words.

"Good thing Valena isn't here to hear this," Astrid noted quietly.

"Yeah," Aaliyah agreed. "Let's look around for an usable stasis tube and contact the scientists—the _people_ running this place," she corrected herself in disgust, then tapped her omni-tool to contact the _Girls' Night Out:_ "Garrus, report. How are things going out there?"

"Very timely on your part," the Turian answered flatly. "I was about to contact you. The Batarians have blown up some of the mercs and scared away the rest. We got twenty minutes, tops, to get to safety before they can interdict us." After a brief pause: "I don't want to think you're trying to keep us in the dark from something we should know."

"I have to keep almost everyone in the dark on this," was the angry reply. "I can tell you, probably these people didn't discover anything you don't already know. But they told ethics to shove it in the process."

Aboard their ship, Garrus frowned. "And you fear you can't use that if people learn how you got it."

"That's about it, more or less," she agreed.

"You humans are full of sensibilities. If it had been us, we would have accepted it as the cost for completing the mission in time."

From a strictly military point of view, Shepard wanted to agree with him. Achieving biotic capabilities decent enough to stand up to the Citadel if it proved necessary had been a critical goal for the Alliance ever since the clash over Pokhara. But the cost, as evinced by the research notes on Subject Zero, was appalling.

"Yeah, I know you would," she replied dryly. "We're done here. Stand by for extraction."

"Roger."

"You heard him, crew, time to get out of Dodge. Miranda, can you rig a self-destruction sequence or something like that here?"

There was the briefest glimmer of hesitation in her face before she answered with a nod.

"Are we leaving her… her clones behind?" Anika asked haltingly.

Aaliyah cursed under her breath. Yes, they were totally innocent. No, it was not right to leave them behind. No, they did not have time to spare. And yes, if she did leave them behind she would be on the same level of the people that had ran that charnel house.

So she turned to Miranda. "Get me the director of this place."

A minute later, a man's voice spoke anxiously through the speaker on her omni-tool: "Is it done?"

She spoke harshly and quickly: "You got eighteen minutes to get everyone ready to go, and that includes evacuating the subjects on your eugenics annex. If you haven't brought them to the elevators by the time we get there, I'm leaving all of you behind. Get moving, mister." She cut the link, denying the man the chance to argue against it. "Sombra, make sure they can't tamper with the self-destruction sequence once Miranda sets it up."

" _Como usted diga, coronel._ "

They made a detour through the wrecked med bay to fetch a stasis tube they could use to safely transport Subject Zero, and arrived at the lift in time to see the security troops arrive in turn hauling the suspension tanks containing the clones.

"What are you carrying that tube for?" a scientist demanded. He was a middle-aged, auburn-haired man with a slight beard. The tag on his lab suit read 'ARCHER'.

"What we came here for," Aaliyah answered bluntly.

"Subject Zero? Is that Subject—"

Shepard stepped forward, grabbed Archer by the collar of his suit, slammed him against a wall, shoved her face into his and muttered through gritted teeth: "Two things stop me from leaving you to the Batarians: one, nobody should get their hands on the data you've developed here, the Hegemony least of all. And two, professional ethics. But nothing says I can't wish I had a motive to shoot your ass, so if you know what's good for you, shut the fuck up and go."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ This chapter and the previous one were harder to do than usual. I rewrote large chunks of them. I'd have gone astray if **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** had not helped as usual. The brainstorming session with **kishinokurobi** was very useful too.

(BTW, If you're into Bloodborne and RWBY, go read kyro's fiction. He's been putting a lot of effort into it.)


	30. Citadel: Trails

_Girls' Night Out_

Ziegler was still focused on her tablet computer, as she had been four hours ago when Shepard had last left her. She was about to joke about her intense concentration, but thought better of it, and simply asked instead:

"What have you found?"

Anika put down the tablet and stretched out tiredly. She squeezed her eyes shut and blinked a few times to clear her sight. "So many things. Where would you like me to start?"

"Our guest in the stasis tube."

A frown. "I've been going through the research notes and logs. Cerberus didn't just want to unlock biotics, they wanted to get the most powerful biotic ever and keep it on a leash. This poor girl here was swapped from a crib when she was barely a few days old, and from the first moment they experimented on her."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "Ever since they got her?"

Anika pointed vaguely at her tablet. "They pumped her brains full of eezo the moment they got her. Getting to the point when they knew the exact dosages and the safe points where they could inject it meant thousands of subjects killed." She let out a long sigh. The long hours of reading had inured her somewhat to the horror, but having to explain it to someone else brought it back in full force. "When it doesn't end horribly, the injection results on the brain encasing the eezo in neuron sheaths, forming nodules. These nodules have to work in tandem to create tangible effects, and the Citadel races use implants and interfaces to synchronize them. It takes years upon years of training to learn how to use them."

"I'm reminded of this." Shepard raised her cybernetic left hand, the one with an embedded hardlight caster.

"In a way, yes," Ziegler agreed. "But this girl doesn't have implants. Biotics is as natural to her as breathing or walking." She grimaced. "There was a lot of empirical work on this. They went through thousands of tests and procedures on who knows how many people to streamline it to this point. Just hear this one out: they have statistics on the rates of success and failure for injection on each and every point in the brain they have attempted to seed with eezo."

Aaliyah knew she should come up with something better, but all she could manage was a simple: "Holy shit."

"I don't swear much, but this time, I'm going to hang a big fucking roger on that one," the doctor replied, allowing some of her indignation to show. "And I'm only getting started. This here is a tried and true protocol for breeding biotics that could give a Matriarch a run for her money, but they still wanted more than that. Why is it that every suit has such a hard-on for super soldiers?"

Shepard blinked. "I don't remember hearing you talk like that. Ever."

"Like I said, I'm just getting started. Not only they've injected her with enough eezo to make her glow in the dark, they used torture and their formula of red sand to condition her. This girl is wired to get her kicks out of hurting and killing others. Come up next Halloween, you don't need any horror films. Just watch two of those experiments. The… the _scientists_ first measured her responses to receiving pain, then to inflicting it, and implanted her with a drug dispenser that automatically dumped narcotics into her bloodstream whenever she hurt someone else. Then took it away when her body started to synthesize them on its own." Another indignant sigh. "They got the biotic they wanted, and then turned her into a bundle of psychotic rage. There's no way you can keep someone like that in check in a civilized fashion."

The Starwatch colonel scowled. While the mission to Pragia had been a success, it had yielded something they could hardly use right away. "So basically, right now we could only deploy her by pointing her at the enemy, then running the other way."

"At this point, that's about right. You can work against that kind of conditioning, but it's going to take months, years even. And you have to start by weaning her off drugs."

Genius level IQ was not necessary to deduce how difficult that would be. "And she's been higher than an astronaut most of her life." A grimace. "Well, there was this case of a World War Two vet that went cold turkey by locking himself in a hotel room for a month."

Ziegler frowned briefly, then stared at Shepard hard for a second. "Don't make the mistake of thinking addictions can always be overcome by means of willpower alone."

"We don't have the luxury of choice here. Sooner or later we'll have to confront Benezia and nobody in our ranks can go toe to toe with her." Aaliyah dwelt on that briefly, then muttered morosely: "You know, for once I wish it was a real thing that age breeds wisdom." _If there was a gram of truth to that, we could have gotten some help already instead of having to figure out how to tame a biotic berserker._

"What? Oh, you mean about the Matriarchs?" Anika put a sad face. "The flipside of that coin is that people become more set in their ways as they age."

Shepard grunted her agreement, then changed subjects: "Have you talked to Miranda?"

The medic shook her head. "I tried, but she stonewalled on me. In her own words, she appreciates the gesture but it's not necessary, it isn't like she's been smitten with an incurable disease or something like that."

The colonel took it neutrally. "Keeping all that to herself, she's going to crack sooner or later." She remembered something then: "Back in that lab, I told you to shut up, in part to protect her. What else was there?"

Anika bowed her head, tapped a few commands on her tablet computer, and showed the readout to Aaliyah. "She's as close to physical and genetic perfection as science can make her, except for one problem." She pointed at a particular piece of data on the tablet. "There's this white paper here, pages droning on and on about her in perfect medicalese. Seems she was purposefully engineered with one flaw: she's barren. She and all her clones."

After a few instants wrestling with the observation, Shepard hazarded a guess: "Maybe it's a safety issue. You don't want to unleash a race of Übermenschen on the galaxy by mistake."

"It could be that," Ziegler agreed. "But if they wanted to achieve that, then we've seen only part of the project… wait a second." On a hunch, she again pulled Subject Zero's records. "This girl is seventeen. The last log entry on the eugenics research was dated nineteen years ago."

Aaliyah understood at once: "So you guess they married the biotics program to the eugenics one?"

The medic was in full overdrive now, her head almost aching with concentration. She quickly scanned a file, then another, speaking out all the while: "That was my first thought. Here, notice this." She pointed at some of Subject Zero's gene mappings, then pulled Miranda's medical records and compared them.

"Yeah, they match." The idea rankled her: if those files were correct, the biotic had been retrofitted with genetic upgrades first developed during the eugenics project that had produced Miranda.

"But that's about as far as it went," Ziegler added. "They hit a snag of some kind or another, but I don't know what it was. These logs reference files we don't have."

"I wonder if Sombra kept something from us…"

"She says she didn't."

"And you believe her?"

Now it was Anika's turn to scowl. "Yes, I know what you mean. She's always smug in that… _devious_ way. Like she's conning you, you know it, and she knows that you know but you can't prove it." She lifted her eyes to briefly stare at Aaliyah. "And yes, this time I believe her. I mean, she warned Lawson she wasn't going to like seeing her clones, and she still let me learn that there's at least one more clone out there."

Immediately the colonel tapped her omni-tool. "Miss Lawson, your presence is required on the med bay."

"I'm on my way," was the cool reply.

Shepard scanned her quickly but thoroughly when she walked in. She still had everything they had come to expect from her: the perfectly combed perfect black hair and guardedly wary deep sapphire eyes, the calm and collected expression on her face, the inviting swagger that made her hips move sinuously and her chest bounce slightly on each step. Miranda was still Miranda.

Except that her skin was almost chalk-white.

"Looks to me like you've been thinking too much."

"Yes." The admission was guileless. "But staying in bed and feeling sorry for myself won't do. Life goes on."

 _Even when faced with an existential crisis she tries—no, she_ keeps _her cool._ Shepard did not know whether to admire her or to worry about her.

"How do you manage?" Aaliyah felt possessed of a strange, fey candor. She stood up, approached Miranda and looked at her with a long, questioning stare that was nonetheless devoid of any edges. "I haven't earned any rights to know more about you, but honestly, I want to know what's keeping you going."

Miranda closed her eyes briefly and met the question with equal candor. "I was brought up completely unaware of everything we found out about me back at Pragia. I was in charge of the facility itself for years and I never caught a whisper of this."

"That I supposed. You looked like you had been hit by a freight train."

"I was," she answered naturally. "Finding out your life was a manufactured illusion and a carefully controlled process at every step of the way will do that to you. Now I know my mother was just an employee of my father's during that process, and however much I'd like to do it now, I can't question being his daughter because I saw his DNA all over my own."

The cool explanation of how everything Lawson had known about herself had come crashing down like a house of cards only made Shepard think of one thing: something was so broken with Miranda that Miranda herself did not know what it was just yet. There was pain there, both Anika and Aaliyah could see the bitterness, but even that seemed to affect Miranda differently, like the sting was a controlled factor instead of a burning coal that scorched everything it touched.

Then she remembered she had seen something like that kind of detachment once. _Widowmaker is cold like that, only much worse. But Tracer said Lacroix claims that Talon butchered her into that shape. Miranda was… born that way? Made that way?_

Her candor changed to intrigue. _How will she take it?_ "If you accept so readily that you were manufactured, then it won't surprise you that there's at least one more clone out there."

Lawson blinked at that. "Show me."

Anika handed her the tablet computer. Shepard realized then that she did not know if Miranda was aware of her being barren, and dreaded for a brief instant to think of how this puzzle of a woman would take the news.

The bitterness was more evident now. "So," she uttered with a sigh. "I'm not the first one he made. I'm the first one he _kept._ "

Aaliyah felt a twinge of pain in her chest at those words. Something else was coming loose before her eyes.

She tossed the tablet back to Ziegler, in the sole display of impulsive anger Shepard had witnessed from her. "Spare me the headache. How many more are there?"

"Supposing it all came from that annex on Pragia, I only found one… person unaccounted for, the one you saw there," Anika answered. "She ought to be at least one year younger than you. It's not clear from these files. All I know for sure is that she… was _made_ from a _batch_ fourteen months more recent than yours." It was clear to both Lawson and Shepard that Ziegler was disgusted by the words she had had to use and more disgusted still by Miranda's situation. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Aaliyah saw her bitterness starting to turn into determination. Miranda's chest heaved up and down once, then her eyes met Shepard's. "I need to speak to Archer."

* * *

A few hours later, Karin Chakwas and Mila Palukhina both stood in front of the large screen, arms crossed and in worried silence. The room depicted on one of the windows was sterile steel-gray bulkheads and absolutely empty, save for a single chair. The unconscious and thoroughly restrained Subject Zero sat there, dressed in a very simple hospital gown. Anika Ziegler, clad in a heavily reinforced Valkyrie suit, was administering a very slight stimulant to the biotic, and a few steps behind her stood a vigilant Gabriel Reyes. His heavy-set complexion looked even more formidable next to the slight and slender medic.

Chakwas noted the changes on Subject Zero's vitals as the stimulant kicked in. "Heart rate coming up," she stated in her clinical voice for the recorder's benefit. "Time zero, patient conscious."

The girl's eyes opened, noted the presence of Reyes and Ziegler, and immediately hardened. She at once was ablaze in blue fire, but the coldness in her face gave way to shock as her limbs did not obey her commands, and then to anger: "What the FUCK have you done to me?!"

Anika returned the furious look with a guilty one. "I know. I'm sorry. But you almost killed us on our first encounter. We had to take precautions."

She got an angry glower for her trouble: "Just wait until I—wait… where's that Archer dickhead? This isn't the lab, where the hell am I?"

"Aboard an Alliance ship. We rescued you from the people experimenting on you. You don't have to fear anything from us."

The irate face changed to one of suspicion as she looked about. No instruments. No needles. No suction cups sticking to her skin, no wires attached to anything. No weights for her to hurl about. Only grey steel, bright white lights, the woman and the man behind her. His black eyes bore into hers, very alert.

She narrowed her eyes and grimaced: "Dim the fucking lights, it's hurting my eyes."

Anika did not move, but instants later the lights dimmed noticeably. She studied the bald girl again as her grimace slightly softened: "I know, your head hurts. Sorry. We can't do anything about that right now."

"Why not?"

"We're trying to wean you off drugs," was the answer. "You have been on red sand for years. Anyone else would have been dead a long time ago."

"Then at least get me some fucking water," she croaked through gritted teeth.

"I can do a little better. Doctor Chakwas, would you please send some ice packs too?"

After a few seconds, an omnic assistant came into the room with a tray. Anika helped Subject Zero drink, reclined her chair backward, then eased a few packs of ice around her head and shoulders.

The bald girl let out a groan of relief. "Oh, that's so much better," she exhaled. Then she smirked, a cold, unfriendly smile that did not reach her eyes. "Now I believe you. Back in the lab nobody would get me a fucking thing." The effort of talking set off a violent throbbing on her head and she grimaced again. "God _fucking_ dammit! Can't you do anything about this?"

Ziegler shook her head apologetically. "I'm sorry, but I need you to hang in there for a while. Later on I can give you something to help with the withdrawal syndrome."

The biotic tightened her jaw and muttered furiously, her whole body starting to glow blue again, "How about I get something _now._ "

"You don't want to do that," an elderly woman's voice admonished her over some speakers she did not see. "These bulkheads are very thin. It won't take much damage for the compartment to depressurize." The rest was left unsaid: _misbehave, and we all die._ _You included._

"Give us a chance, please, will you?" Anika asked softly in her nicest, most sympathetic voice. "We're trying to help here. I know all the stages of red sand addiction, and I'm very much aware of how painful an aural migraine can be. Please bear with us."

Kind words succeeded where the implied threat failed. But the throbbing could not care less. It became a monstrous pain, to the point of making her want to cry. She squeezed her eyes closed and clenched her teeth, waiting for the torture to lessen, willing it to lessen, then managed to hiss: "What do you want with me? Why I can't move my limbs?"

* * *

Shepard scowled at the screen. "This is all well and good, and a very samaritan gesture on our part, but it's not going to help in the short term. We don't have the time it takes to rehabilitate this junkie."

Palukhina turned towards Aaliyah, disapproval written on her tanned face. "And what do you suggest, _polkovnik Shepard'yeva?_ Conscripting a person that has been subjected to torture and conditioning for all of her short life?"

"We may have to," Anderson admitted. "And if anything goes wrong, whoever gets to call the shots after they find what's left of us can blame the Citadel for not strong-arming the Matriarchs into supporting us."

Liara and Valena were analyzing the readouts from the instruments and the research logs Shepard's team had retrieved from Pragia, different expressions etched on their faces: the tender T'Soni was appalled and horrified, the veteran Danaan was quietly impressed.

"Either you were mistaken, or you lied to Garrus," the commando said as she turned to face Shepard. "These people actually did put together a protocol to reliably produce biotics that anyone sane would approach with caution. To my knowledge, none of our scientists have achieved that."

Sombra's eyes narrowed at that. " _Eso no puede ser._ Are you saying that no Asari egghead ever thought that researching how to get better biotics would be a good idea? So what's it with, say, Serrice Council biotic amps?"

"The last concerted effort in that regard took place by the time we met the Turians. It did not last long. When the initial tests showed that their average biotic potential was orders of magnitude below our own, the initiative was discontinued."

"You try telling that to Saren," Shepard observed dryly, remembering how the rogue Spectre had wiped the floor with the cream of Starwatch.

Now the hacker nodded. "And as we humans didn't seem to have any potential either…"

The usually serene Valena allowed herself a frown. "Complacency and sloth. For thousands of years my elders contented themselves with being the most powerful individuals in a galaxy filled with powerful people. Now 'a race of upstarts' has proved that they can catch up in less than two decades."

"But why lie to Garrus and then show this to us?" Liara asked, missing the point.

"I didn't lie. Like Sombra here, I thought Asari had a gram of common sense," Aaliyah retorted, her annoyance talking. "Sorry. I just get the feeling we wasted a lot of valuable time." _Except that we didn't. We blew up a slaughterhouse that would have given Mengele a raging boner._

"Colonel?" It was Mercy. "I have a message from Shilyna T'Perro. She requests a meeting at your earliest convenience."

 _Somehow I guess those weren't the words she used._ "What did she say? Exactly?"

The AI replayed the recorded request. The voice was abrasive, harsh and grated the ears like sandpaper: "While you were busy advancing your plots at our expense, we turned up intel on Rana Thanoptis. If you're still interested on actually catching Saren, I'll be on Erinyes within the day. Just in case you at least care for keeping appearances."

* * *

As it turned out, it was not the antagonistic T'Perro that had come across the information, but Gavius Surrakar instead. They both, however, were waiting for the rest of the Compact in the briefing room in Erinyes, two adjutants with each of them.

"Glad to see you returning unharmed," the Turian welcomed them politely. "Anything you want to share with us?"

"We got what we went there for," Shepard answered. "But this asset is not fit for immediate deployment. I cannot vouch for her if we have to make use of her before she's ready."

"Enlighten us." The voice of the ancient Asari was cool but had no overt edges. Her eyes, however, were purple coals glowing with hostility. "What is this 'asset' you're talking about?"

Aaliyah held her glare. "Ideally we would have enlisted the aid of one or more Matriarchs, but given how uncooperative they have been, I'll have to make do with what I've got. And what I got is the result of an experimental program to produce superior biotics."

Shilyna's face hardened. "An 'experimental program to produce superior biotics'?" she repeated verbatim, and was about to sneer her disdain when she caught Valena's look.

"The program achieved its goals, ma'am," the commando informed. "They exceeded them, in fact."

T'Perro's hostility turned into wariness. "I want to see what you got."

"You will soon enough." Shepard slammed that door shut. "Under the terms of our agreement, all technology exchanges can only be conducted on a voluntary and reciprocal basis. In fact, we have shared with you far more than you have shared with us," she reminded her, hinting at the medi-gel and nanomedicine programs and their attempts to adapt those technologies to Citadel use.

Unexpectedly the Asari Spectre shrugged. "I'll have to trust Valena's word, then."

Aaliyah concealed her surprise with a nod. "As I said, you will see soon enough. Now, shall we move on?"

Heads bowed. The Compact agents moved to take their seats on the small auditorium-like briefing room. T'Perro had a moment to stare coldly at Reyes as he passed by, a look the assassin returned with a small and very unfriendly smirk.

The lights went out. At once the hologram projector turned on, depicting a star chart. "I've got a series of contacts on the Terminus scavenger community," Surrakar begun. "This information came to me from one of those. They happened upon this ship on these coordinates, and they sold the untouched flight recorders to my aides. We have them in storage for your perusal if you wish."

Sombra at once raised a hand. "I'd like to get on with it right away."

Surrakar pointed at one of his aides. "My adjutant will see to it. Please follow her." After the hacker had followed the Turian out, he continued: "What we have been able to ascertain from the logs and the inspection of the ship is that they were waylaid by pirates and forcibly boarded after they refused to jettison their cargo. As you can see on these recordings, my aides found evidence consistent with this theory: the breached cargo bay doors, bullet impacts on the bulkheads, punctured containers, blood smears and drops. The samples retrieved indicate Asari, Batarian and Krogan blood, multiple victims of all three species, but no corpses at all.

"It does not escape us that this may be a decoy. Saren knew the Spectres inside out, so now that he is on the run he knows everything we are likely to conclude from such a scenario."

"Then defend your conclusions." Lacroix's cool voice lowered the temperature in the room a few degrees. "What makes you think this is not a decoy after all?"

"A combination of things," was the reply. "First, consider the location. The ship was ambushed just after exiting the relay on the Hourglass Nebula, a typical hit-and-run operation. It's no news that relays are hotspots for activity on the Terminus, and the Hourglass relay is on a no-mans-land of sorts. Periodically the ruler of Omega conducts cleanup operations there."

"A crime lord policing her turf," Tracer scoffed slightly.

"In a way, I agree," Surrakar nodded politely. "It's widely believed that those operations are just for show, but those raids are usually met with a strong response on part of T'Loak's syndicate because piracy in and around Omega space means less business going their way.

"Then, there is the question of why they would leave the ship behind. The craft itself bears a few answers in this regard. It's been armed and armored to deal with life on the unfriendly space of the Terminus worlds, and it put up quite a fight. We're inclined to think the raiders sustained excess casualties and were left with too small a crew to tend to both ships at the same time, so they took the most valuable cargo and left behind the rest. They only took one precaution: they removed the data storage units so there would be no videos of them. Everything else, they left untouched, including both the fake flight recorder and the authentic one."

"No bodies," the veteran Urdnot Wrex said, half to himself. Then, louder: "Why would they take them?"

The Turian Spectre bowed his head. "I know. That's the one thing that doesn't make sense. But then, there's always something that doesn't."

Miranda was not convinced. She stood up and walked around the hologram projector, studying the star chart and the pictures.

Shepard noticed this. "Speak your mind, miss Lawson."

The brunette woman shook her head slightly, her eyes still on the holograms. "Just a feeling. I don't see anything out of place, except for the lack of dead bodies as Wrex pointed out, but something is still off."

"Noted," the Starwatch colonel bowed her head. "Maybe if we get a peek at the data itself on Rana Thanoptis this will make more sense."

Surrakar continued. The projector displayed a series of logs next: "According to the flight recorder, she chartered this ship and provided her own security detail. The destination was Cyone."

 _That's on Asari space,_ Aaliyah thought at once. But Anika beat her to the question:

"Correct me if I'm mistaken, miss T'Perro, but if I remember correctly, Cyone is an important world for you."

The ancient Asari relaxed a little from her coolly antagonistic posture. "The Krogan made it a point of personal pride to take the planet after we threw back several of their landing attempts."

Wrex grunted. "I remember. I fought there. Had to drag Overlord Kredak into his shuttle the last time."

Lena turned to the Krogan in wonder: "Fourteen hundred-odd years?"

He answered with a grim smile. "Nothing can keep me down. Years least of all."

"So, she was going to a bastion of the Asari aristocracy," Shepard thought out loud. "Not the best place to raise hell."

T'Perro smirked. "The planet is a garden world, no big cities but lots of small towns. Many dusty-old relics there," she said distastefully. "All of them Benezia's cronies. But yes, you—I mean, _we_ have to tread lightly there."

"Once again, we're left with the question of how to get there without people noticing," Martinsson mused. "And this is not a cosmopolitan world like Illium."

Aaliyah's brain went _click:_ "Aren't there several Justicar shrines there? Say, why don't we hide in plain sight?" She turned to T'Perro: "Pretend you're planning to introduce us to one, show us just how badly out of our league we are compared to you."

Someone else would have missed the subtle snub. The ancient Spectre did not. She smiled coldly. "It will be my pleasure."

Sombra walked in then. Reyes noticed her confused looks:

"You didn't find anything."

" _Bueno… sí y no._ The flight recorder wasn't tampered with at all," she informed with a note of disappointment and frustration. "Either that or someone was fantastically clever faking the records. If they aren't the real thing, I'd _really_ like to meet whoever forged this."

At that moment, Genji's and Tracer's omni-tools rang. The latter turned around to see what the message was about.

She dropped her jaw in stunned surprise, just as her ninja comrade cried out in shock:

"What is it?" Martinsson asked attentively.

Lena looked at her with strange eyes. "They found a popsicle. _The_ popsicle to end all popsicles."

Anika opened her mouth in amazement, then her face broke into a delighted grin: "Mei? They found _Mei?_ "

* * *

 _Author's note:_ in addition to their usual support, **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** helped immensely this time by letting me borrow their brains when I got stuck.


	31. Citadel: The chains of commanding

_Girls' Night Out —_ Erinyes Station

"So where did they find her?" Aaliyah asked. The mood was split along clearly defined lines on the mess hall: the Citadel people was intrigued by this discovery that had so excited their colleagues, and the Starwatch crew was anxious to learn more about Mei. The former Talon operatives sat aside in a knot; the small distance between them and the rest might as well have been an ocean.

"In Antarctica," Anika answered, still reading the report. "Thawing exposed the ruins of an exploration base there were no records of, and people were sent to investigate. The place was wrecked by explosives, but there were intact chambers buried beneath the rubble and ice. They dug them up and found Mei in cryostasis."

"But how did she end up down there?"

"I put her there." Reyes' voice was even deeper and lower than usual, his head bent over his chest where he sat.

Tracer glared at him with hard eyes. "You went there to kill her, didn't you." Shameful silence was her response. "And what did she do?"

The assassin did not answer at first. She almost insisted before he did: "She… sealed herself underground. Sealed up the manhole, then collapsed it underneath. There was no way to get to her."

"Good thing there wasn't," Amari observed sharply.

Another moment of silence followed, thick, stifling, pain and anger-filled. "The important thing is that he didn't," Shepard said carefully, skirting the quicksands that could swallow her. "I'm not going to go over this again. You all know how hard is it for me to admit that Gabriel has worked a lot to clean up his act." She looked at each Starwatch member in the eye, one by one. "For now, let's just be grateful that he didn't kill her."

Layali held her stare. "Whatever way you call it, ma'am, you can't polish a turd. I don't disrespect what you have to put up with. But however much he wears the cape and fights the fight, he's a killer. He'll always be."

That flipped a switch in Reyes. He slowly lifted his head to glare at Amari. No one failed to notice his cool eyes. "I can't take back what I did. You are pissed about it, fine. I get it. You want to get it out of your system, there's the ring. Let's go."

Lacroix and Sombra looked on from their corner as Shepard tried not to sigh, feeling many eyes on her as well. _So, it has come down to this._ She knew she had to do something, but at a time she felt she could not interfere. Even if her crew had stood by her when she had reluctantly commended Gabriel's accomplishments on the Citadel, the rift between the Overwatch and Talon crews still existed. There were just too many dead and tears.

"Alright," Layali smirked dangerously. "I'll take you on. How long before you chicken out and turn into smoke?"

Reyes did not answer. He simply stood up and gave her the cold shoulder as he walked past her—

Or tried to. Amari stood in his way. "Come on. I don't need no ring. Right here, you fucker."

Martinsson looked at Shepard, but instead of putting a stop to that, she motioned the rest to step back. She did not bother to warn either of them not to take it too far, but instead she exchanged glances with Tracer and Valena, getting slight nods from each.

The former Blackwatch commander took a step back, and waited for the first strike. Layali obliged almost on the spot. She threw a series of short jabs his way, her anger morphed into cool precision as she looked for weaknesses, but Gabriel did not offer any. He did not even parry her strikes, moving just enough for her attacks to find only thin air, and waited for an opening himself that his opponent did not show either. To an unknowing bystander that mutual probing still would have seemed a dazzling display of skill on both sides, as Reyes was one-hundred percent synthetic and Amari was almost entirely so herself, hence their uncannily fast movements.

Then Gabriel unexpectedly seized Layali by her wrist as she threw another punch at him, pulled at her arm, and hurled an outstretched palm at her unprotected face. Amari parried the blow with her other hand, but she was distracted by this maneuver long enough for Reyes to slip a foot between hers. The hand holding Amari by the wrist now seized her by the shoulder, and Gabriel let himself fall backward and downwards, leaning with his other foot on her right thigh to throw her over his head. His adversary reacted almost too late, and cushioned her fall with her hands instead of landing face-first, but by then Reyes was back on his feet, forcing Amari to again retreat with a roll before standing back up herself.

The onlookers held their breaths as both fighters glared at each other. Normal people would be panting heavily, but both opponents being synthetics meant they both were spry as cats, Amari in the compact posture of a kickboxer in contrast with Reyes' well disguised defensive aikido stance.

This time Gabriel attacked first. He threw a sideways kick at her knee that missed, leaving him open for a riposte, but Layali did not follow through, aware that her enemy expected it. Instead, she waited to retaliate with a kick of her own, a roundhouse strike that would break anyone else's neck if it were to connect, but Reyes dodged it easily—

—not reading that it was a gambit of Amari's in turn. He moved in to seize the moment when she briefly exposed her back to him, but as she turned again to face him her outstretched fist deflected his punch with a violent blow, knocking his guard wide open for a split-second, and she made the best out of it by jumping into the air and solidly planting both feet on his chest. The impact sent Reyes flying some four-odd steps, and he barely had time enough to raise his fists before her right leg found his face. She left her foot in contact with his hand a moment too long, daring him to grab it, but he read her intent and pushed her away with a frontal, stomping kick that she evaded with a slick twist of her waist—and, in doing so, concealed how she seized the foot behind her back by the ankle before slamming down on the knee with her other elbow. Reyes hit the floor hard, and immediately Amari was over him. Fists slammed on his face five, six, seven times—

—before Garrus surprised everyone by speaking up: "I think that's enough."

Shepard's eyes were glued on Layali's right fist, frozen above her head and ready for another punch while Gabriel and Amari traded glares, one empty, the other coldly enraged, and she was taken back to her own battle with Reyes, when the man was still Reaper. As years had gone by she had come to believe that the man had pulled his punches, and intentionally left it at that. She did not want to dwell on his motivations.

But now the question came again, as she pondered whether Gabriel had let Amari vent off her hatred by doing the same: _did he let her win?_

Slowly, the jumpjet trooper stood up, turned her back on Reyes and walked two steps before freezing into place. For a split second it looked like she was going to say something, but in the end she did not and left the mess hall in silence.

* * *

The whole episode left a bitter aftertaste on Shepard's mouth. Deploying the foldable treadmill on her quarters and running for an hour did not help. Going to the station for a round of gunnery practice on the Erinyes firing range —where she came upon Widowmaker, a presence that had become usual there— did not help either. She considered going to Zenyatta for help, but decided against it. _I don't need another zen koan now, I need another officer to hear me out._ But Anderson was currently away, back on Starwatch HQ in Numbani.

And thus, she surprised even her own self when she asked Mercy to summon Liara T'Soni to her cabin.

The door slid open after a few minutes to reveal a very embarrassed Liara. The young Asari was blushing to the point her face was almost fluorescent cyan. "You… you called, colonel?" she asked timidly.

"Yeah. Come over here." Aaliyah was lying on her bed as long as she was. She felt drained.

T'Soni's awkwardness started to ebb away as she noticed Shepard's exhaustion and begun to understand. "I heard something… but I suppose you want to talk about it."

Shepard shook her head without looking. "No. I want something else."

Again the bright cyan blushing. She hesitantly walked towards the restroom: "Oh… okay… just give me a—"

"No." Aaliyah shook her head again. "Just like that is okay now."

Liara smiled softly. "I see." She nodded and sat next to Shepard on her bed. Slowly the Asari reached for her hands, held them, and looked into her eyes.

"It's alright. I'm here for you."

With that, her eyes went solid black, and Shepard's thoughts and emotions hit Liara in full force. The Starwatch colonel was torn inside, almost crazy with concern and horrified at herself. The more time went by, the less she hated Reyes and the more she pitied him, and the more she hated herself for it — and the more she feared to lose the respect of her men for that. Again Aaliyah's mind showed her the terror of seeing what Reaper had done to her squad and Team-2 back at the Moon.

Their joining was brief, lasting only for a scarce minute and a half before Liara broke their link.

"It wasn't like that a few days ago," the Asari girl said quietly.

Shepard snorted. "We were busy with your 'concerns' last time."

A little shy laugh trickled out, then Liara was serious. "You were… more in control then. Now, I…" She struggled with words. "I guess I didn't want to see it then."

"No. You got your panties all soaked with the idea of the tough soldier that doesn't take shit from anyone." Another snort. "And to think that once it was me who idealized people."

"A teenager's mistake, right? It's fitting… fitting that I made that mistake."

Liara felt small. The difference between them was huge, her concerns feeling trivial next to what she had seen. Shepard had squeezed so much more living into her forty-three years than the young Asari girl had done in her one-hundred and six.

And now this tough human was struggling to hold herself together.

But the tough human could read her. She smiled and some light returned to her eyes. "Hey. Knowing that you know what's going on makes it a little better."

"But I can't offer you any advice," she protested.

"Think a little. You don't have to come up with something right now. You've already helped." _Really,_ her gaze twinkled.

A shaky grin. "I'll… I will. I promise."

The Asari watched Shepard drift into a heavy sleep, her face now somewhat more relaxed, then stood up and walked out silently, racking her brains for an answer all the while. Because of that aching concentration, she did not notice her feet seemed to think of their own accord, until she found herself standing in the doorway to the quarters assigned to the Talon crew.

"What do you want? Feeling lost?" Reyes asked, his voice hoarse but not hostile.

Unexpectedly Liara smiled. "No. I need your help."

* * *

"Hello." Shepard walked into the cell. "How do you feel?"

The bald biotic girl, lying on her bed, opened her bloodshot eyes and painstakingly turned her head around to look at the newcomer. A wet towel covered her forehead, with another soaked in ice-cold water on a bowl over her nightstand.

"Like shit, that's how I feel," Subject Zero answered torturously.

"It should start improving anytime soon, doctor Ziegler said."

She snorted, only to immediately grimace in pain. "Well, this fucking headache didn't get the memo." Slowly she sat up, holding the towel in place with her left hand and reaching out for the other on the bowl: "It hurts. Bad."

"Lie down. I'll help you."

The girl exhaled and did as she was bid without a word. Shepard noticed how tired she was. _Well, having to put up with a head-splitting migraine for days…_

 _I'm kind of grateful and surprised she didn't blow up the ship._

She squeezed the towel, replaced the old one with it, and checked the ice packs around the girl's head. "Those are still good," Subject Zero groaned. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. Hang in there."

A scowl. "I'm curious. You should be happy for that. I'd have gone myself for painkillers otherwise."

"Curious? About what?"

The scowl upgraded to another painful grimace. "I spent all my life locked up, tied up to a chair or a hospital bed, having to put up with people sticking needles in me or… _zapping_ me when I didn't do what they wanted. Or just for shits and giggles." She took a deep breath. "Either your crew are really being nice, or you're holding out on the bad news."

Aaliyah recalled Ziegler's words: ' _this girl has been wired to get her kicks out of hurting people.'_ Then she was reminded of how Morrison had discussed the chains of commanding, and committed herself. "Kind of both. I don't know if you'd see it as bad news."

Subject Zero opened an eye. "Shoot."

The Starwarch colonel sat on a nearby chair. "We wouldn't have found you if we didn't need someone with your… skillset."

Another snort. "It figures. You need me to do some dirty work." Then: "What could you need me for? Is there someone you can't turn into a wall stain?"

Shepard shook her head. "No, actually we need to capture someone. We don't have anyone with the kind of skills needed to subdue her."

A frown: "Wait a minute—who do you want to bag?"

"An Asari Matriarch. An ancient and powerful one."

The girl's bloodshot eyes bulged briefly. "That's a tall order, there." She then closed them. "Sorry to… to rain on your parade, but maybe you got the wrong girl. I'm great at squashing people that aren't on my tier, but that's it. You don't need any fancy moves for that." She smirked grimly through her pained face. "You cutting back on the niceness now?"

This was a surprise. Shepard had expected this girl to be boastful about her unique talent instead of realistic about her weaknesses. "We got someone who can help a little on that. And you won't be alone. You'd be going in with the best people we can get our hands on."

Subject Zero squeezed her eyes shut and let out a tortured groan. "Argh, shit… anyway, I'm not going to do you a lot of good in this shape."

Aaliyah allowed herself a smile. "Of course not. The doc is working on something that can help without ruining your rehab."

A blink. "A relief for this? Where do I sign up?" Then a frown: "Would I get it if I said no?"

"Of course you would, we're trying to help. But we can't go forward without you. We need what you can do."

The bald girl glanced at Shepard once, then laid herself back on the bed between the ice packs with a grimace. "Too soft around the edges. What kind of a commander are you?"

"One that cares."

That one scored points, Aaliyah noticed, reading Subject Zero's nonplussed face. She turned her head again to face Shepard: "Damn, your men must _love_ you. Alright, I'm in."

* * *

Cyone

Two days later, Shepard watched the airlock of her ship open to reveal a bright lilac sky. Slowly she walked down the boarding ramp, her steps increasingly confident as she noticed just how similar to Earth this planet was.

"It's warm here," she told Valena.

"It usually is," Danaan confirmed.

Behind them followed most of the Compact crew, with Wrex, Miranda and her omnic engineers remaining onboard. They had brought two guests with them. One of those was Genji's nephew, Hiroshi Shimada, whom Genji himself had asked to bring along after remembering what Hanzo had said about his research on Asari fighting styles. The other one was staring at the sky with wide open eyes and a slightly open mouth.

"Jacqueline?" Anika asked cautiously behind her.

"Oh, doc, sorry," the biotic girl said with some embarrassment and walked all the way down to the ground. There she stopped again. "It's so… it's _gorgeous._ "

Ziegler smiled. "It's the first time you see a sky, isn't it?"

The girl nodded numbly. After a brief discussion with Anika, Palukhina and Chakwas, she had picked the name Jacqueline Nought for herself — Nought being a pun on her project codename, and Jacqueline because, in her own words, 'it sounded nice.'

"Anything wrong with your clothes?" Anika asked, noticing how she pulled at them at times.

"No, well… I've never worn anything other than a hospital gown. Or a straitjacket."

A deputation of Asari was waiting for them next to the landing pad. Three of them, dressed in some kind of white ritual gowns, stepped forward. "Cyone welcomes you, members of the Compact," one of them announced while the rest kept a respectful silence. "My name is Sashaya Cyrule, and I am the keeper of this shrine. Shilyna T'Perro has told us extensively about you. We hope you learn useful skills from this visit."

Shepard remembered the discussion that had taken place before they set course to Cyone. "You'll be challenged," Garrus had anticipated. "And they don't believe you'll be up to it."

"And you agree?" Martinsson had asked.

"Yes," the Turian had replied candidly, "but really, no one is. Asari Justicars train for decades, sometimes for over a century, before they're officially anointed as such. Just ask Valena here."

The Asari commando had bowed her head slightly. "The best you could hope for is not to embarrass yourselves. Justicars have even rejected Spectre appointments. They believe their duty is to the Asari."

Tracer had tentatively asked, "So your affiliation to the Compact…"

"I'll never be anointed," had been the calm answer. "But I made the choice willingly. The Justicars are the very best of our species, probably the very best on the whole galaxy, but they are too insular-minded, too isolationist. I'm part of something bigger now."

"But how come T'Perro did get anointed?" Amari had wanted to know.

"She was already a Justicar when she was offered to be appointed as a Spectre, but she spurned traditions and accepted it. There was a lot of criticism leveled at her, but her answer would be something akin to saying 'bite me' in your language."

Shepard had looked to the roof and burst out in exasperation, "Why everything has to be so stupidly complicated? We got the fucking Council behind us, why can't we just pull rank and get the answers we need?"

Aaliyah squared herself. Suddenly she had found herself with two overlapping missions instead of one: favorably impressing some of the most ancient and powerful beings in the galaxy, and investigating the whereabouts of Benezia. She could not afford to make any mistakes.

"We are glad to be here," she answered politely. "If you will excuse my candor, mistress Cyrule, I believe my Spectre colleague used rather colorful words to refer to us."

The shrine keeper smiled warmly. "That she did. Mistress T'Perro certainly dislikes you. But that did not stop her from complimenting you. I am curious myself."

 _That bitch just made my work here a lot harder._

"We are intrigued ourselves, mistress," Genji spoke up respectfully. "My nephew here has been studying your martial traditions for years on now."

Hiroshi half-bowed, in pure Japanese manner. He was a tall, lean, wiry man with not an ounce of body fat, his pate freshly shaven. Like his father Hanzo, however, he sported a slight beard, and his eyebrows enhanced the already formidable glare of his brown, hawk-like eyes.

Cyrule gestured for them to follow them towards the tall, elegant building next to the landing pad, and asked of Genji and Hiroshi: "I understand you yourselves are part of an ancient tradition of warriors as well?"

"'Ancient' by our reckoning, that is," the younger Shimada pointed out. "To one such as you, a discipline that is fourteen hundred years old must be a novel development."

"You would be surprised, Hiroshi-san," the Asari answered, to the amazement of the Starwatch members. "It is true that our lives are longer and slower than yours, but that only means the danger of settling down into stale patterns is that much greater. We are constantly seeking to adapt and improve our arts."

"I have to surmise mistress T'Perro already told you about us," Genji commented.

"More than that," the shrine keeper said. "She provided me with dossiers on the members of the Compact. You, in particular, piqued my interest, Genji-san. But your entire crew is intriguing in their own way. I can only commend your leadership and your commitment to your mission. Were either lacking, a force comprised of elements so opposed would have collapsed on the spot."

No one missed that she was referring to Reyes and Lacroix.

"Saren's attack on Elysium was an attack on all of us," Amari surprised her commander by speaking up. "If you will excuse my words, I still want to tear off a few heads. But Saren is everyone's enemy. If we still have scores to settle we'll see to that after we've nailed him."

* * *

"She said that?" Reyes snorted in amusement.

"You went easy on her, old man. Where's the Reaper I used to know and love?" Sombra chuckled.

"Somewhere behind me. Now shut up and do your thing."

The brown-skinned girl winked mischievously at him before focusing her attention on the simple desktop terminal. " _Tranquilo, hombre._ Everything is okay."

Widowmaker was keeping an eye on the cobblestone paths leading to that particular homestead from her vantage position on the roof. "You do realize that our target could be anywhere on this planet. We're eight hundred miles away from the town where Thanoptis' ship was supposed to land in the first place."

"This is the best we got," Reyes muttered. He felt uneasy. They could not possibly be the only ones with thermoptic camouflage, and being caught intruding into the private quarters of the shrine keeper would result in a diplomatic incident that would ruin their chances of pursuing that lead any further.

"I'm in," Sombra announced. "This will take a few seconds."

"Actual, this is Talon lead. We're in position and commencing our breach. Will report as needed." Widowmaker relayed Reyes' message back to their ship via the tightbeam transmitter on her rifle.

"Copy that," Miranda acknowledged. She did not bother asking whether they had had any problems.

Reyes waited for Sombra to complete her hacking with some unease. This was awfully easy. He did not bother asking what kind of people Benezia could draw upon for help, for he remembered all too clearly that they were entire squads of Asari huntresses and commandos. "Surely her troops would set up an ambush if they knew we were coming."

"They can't lay traps on the whole planet," was Lacroix's curt retort on his earbud.

" _Muchachos, relájense._ I've played this game before. Surely she has people here too who are reporting our visit to her. It's not like something like this happens every day, _¿cierto?_ And so, what we want to know is… where the reports are being sent to."

* * *

Genji and his nephew had known for a long time now that the 'Justicar shrine' term was more or less equivalent to the concept of a very ancient and prestigious martial arts dojo. This stylized building of large halls with tall ceilings was, after a fashion, vaguely reminiscent of the fighting schools in his native Japan, mostly because of the ascetic decor and atmosphere.

"It reminds me of Shaolin," Hiroshi noted, unaware of the thoughts on his uncle's head.

"Shaolin?" Cyrule asked.

"It's a large series of temples where many human martial arts styles first came to be," Valena answered. "It's a legendary place on Earth."

The shrine keeper nodded. "How old are your Shaolin temples?"

"It is, regrettably, not clear," the older Shimada answered. "Ancient texts suggest they were founded between sixteen and seventeen centuries ago. But most, if not all eastern martial arts trace their lineage back to them. Ninjutsu itself does."

Cyrule gestured at the halls around her. "This building is nine hundred years old by your reckoning, but it's not where our shrine came to be. We have trained Justicars for twelve thousand years." She paused briefly, with the intention of letting that sink in, Shepard thought. "Many Asari have lived, trained and learned in these halls, but very, very few ever get anointed. It's not rare for a whole decade to pass without anyone graduating."

"But why is that?" Hiroshi asked. "I have studied Asari fighting styles. Biotics aside, it's something a human could learn."

"You certainly could," the shrine keeper allowed. "But there is a lot more to being a Justicar than just fighting. Justicars choose to cast away their old lives, to surrender all their material possessions except for their armor and weapons, and to live and die by the Code: over five thousand sutras covering every possible situation they could encounter."

Danaan quoted, "'If I follow the Code, I am just. If I do not, I am unjust.'"

"Indeed," Cyrule approved. "There are no gray areas for a Justicar. To live by the Code is to protect the innocent, to punish the guilty, and to defend the common laws and norms of Asari society. The Code demands absolute commitment, for it may call upon the Justicar to perform very harsh actions."

Shepard saw the opening, but Genji spoke up first: "So if a Justicar must exact punishment on a criminal, how would she judge an Asari inflicting wanton death on helpless civilians?"

"She would hunt her down and kill her," was the automatic response.

The Compact crew exchanged interrogatory looks, but before they could answer, Cyrule and her two attendants stopped by a pair of closed doors and pushed them open. A large hall was on the other side, with roughly forty apprentices clad in green leotards performing what Genji and Hiroshi immediately equated with katas. The rustle of naked feet on the stone soil and the sharp hisses uttered by the apprentices on each move were the only noises they heard. The walls bore the impact marks of many generations of students practicing their punches, biotic or otherwise. Again the Shimadas exchanged glances: _Shaolin._

"Every student here is in her late nineties or in the early years of her first century, just like your own young comrade," Cyrule noted with an aside glance at Liara. "They all have been living and training here for at least two decades."

Hiroshi stepped forward and studied the motions. The movements would have been alien to someone else, except for an uncanny resemblance to those of the most ancient kung fu styles. "This is very familiar to me. But then, there are only so many ways for a body of our mutual complexions to train, however diverse they may be."

"Indeed," the shrine keeper agreed. "But do not be fooled. These initiates have yet to master their biotic skills. Before they can move on to that part, they must master their own bodies."

"So until they actually pick up those skills, their training would not be much too different from our own?" Genji asked.

"In other words, yes," Cyrule nodded. "You will be able to see it for yourself." She spoke one word out loud, and at once the initiates stopped and vacated the center of the hall to sit cross-legged by the walls.

Then a woman clad in red appeared and approached the newcomers in absolute silence.

"Lady Samara is a guest like yourselves, a Justicar that learned her skills on a shrine off-world," Cyrule explained. "She would be honored to have a training session with you."

Aaliyah realized how expertly they had been herded down that path, but now, it was something they had expected, so Genji did not even look sideways at her. "The honor would be mutual, mistress."

The ninja walked to the center of the hall and studied his adversary. The blue-skinned, feminine alien that stood three sword lengths away wore a tight-fitting leotard with an incomprehensibly low neckline that left little of her ample bosom to the imagination. Some strange tiara-like accessory attached over her forehead and around her temples enhanced her formidable eyes, light-blue, deep, and lifeless. She was relaxed in her motionlessness, and even the simple symmetry of her breathing had poise and grace. In this elegance he recognised Valena Danaan, but this Justicar was heads and shoulders above his Asari comrade: where she had skill, his opponent had mastery.

 _The adversary is not the opponent you are facing,_ the Sôke had lectured him, all those years ago, when he was still in his early teens. _The adversary is the Unknown. Danger is real, Genji, but fear is a choice. It is not something you should struggle to hold at bay. That's courage, and it will serve you well, but it is not what you should seek. Neither should you indulge in recklessness. True ninjutsu is attaining calm and relaxation in the face of the Unknown, freely accepting that death is a possible outcome, and trusting your own body knows the right answer without involving your mind. One who achieves this attains true enlightenment, and has nothing to fear from any danger._

 _Did you achieve it, Master?_ He had asked.

 _Is your rice bowl full?_ Had been the answer.

Genji had been startled. They were not eating at that time, there were no bowls around. _I'm sorry, Master, I don't understand._

The face of the ancient, wizened ninja had broken into a labyrinth of wrinkles as he grinned kindly. _Look after your own bowl, Genji._

Later on, he had understood what the Sôke had meant: each student of the Way walked her own journey. He had nothing to gain by fussing about how others did.

And this was to be another step on that road for him.

"Rules are as follows," the shrine keeper informed: "The bout continues until one of the fighters is knocked down. Neither obviously lethal nor grievously injuring techniques are allowed." A brief look at each other, then she said: "Begin."

Genji darted forward at once. He had sparred a lot with Miranda and Valena, and was slowly developing ways to deal with biotics users. Each had a particular series of gestures and motions associated with a specific kind of attack; while no two biotics used equal maneuvers for the same technique, they still would use broadly similar movements, enough for him to distinguish them. With enough practice and training, that meant he could disrupt a biotic's assaults.

Waiting for his opponent to come to him was suicidal in this case, so he took the initiative, his outstretched fingers and toes seeking the body of his rival in a multitude of stabs, punches, and kicks — but carefully so, far from being as fast or as strong as he could be, wanting to keep an ace up his sleeve. Even so, it was a spectacle to behold, as each attack was chained to the previous one, and the ninja flowed between movements as if he was a wave washing over his Asari opponent. On top of strength, speed and reflexes that no biological adversary could match, he had an inkling of the equilibrium his Sôke had taught him about.

And that caution served him well. There were several ways to meet an attack. To block it like a rock, to absorb it and flow right with it like water, to evade it like the wind, to retaliate against it like a burst of flame, or to pretend a weakness and lull the enemy into the void of a false sense of security. The Asari had chosen to be like the wind. His strikes missed her by ever-thinner breadths, but her movements were economical, almost imperceptible, and Genji noticed he seemed to get closer only because she was learning what was the closest she could get to him in turn.

Thus, all a sudden, he relented on his onslaught after only eight seconds had passed, with both adversaries in close contact. They remained frozen into position for a few instants, each one waiting for the other to move.

Then suddenly she moved. There was a bluish blur as her right fist sought his flank. He had only a split-second to parry the blow with a downward circular motion of his left hand, and he immediately retaliated with a strike towards her face, his fingers now as dangerous as claws. The Asari met it with her own outstretched hand, entwining it with his, and forcing it downwards and sideways—

—but she had to abort her maneuver to dodge the kick that would have caved in her chest. Genji pressed on. As his foot landed, he pivoted around, still holding the Asari by her hand, and with a torsion of his wrist—

—but the wrist of his rival did not budge. Immediately he let go, somersaulted and rolled over the ground to avoid the punch that would have torn a hole through his side. He was in the clear, but now fatally out of range, and his enemy moved on to attack. He had to either evade or disrupt it, and he chose the latter, dashing forward to meet the attack and—

—batting it aside as the shockwave coalesced right where he had been. He kept moving, sliding past her, then threw a chop with the rigid side of his right hand at the back of her neck. The blow struck true, but the Asari did not flinch. Genji was surprised by her resilience—

—and that instant of distraction was all she needed. A flick of her wrist, and a blur hit her rival squarely on his chest. Genji was sent flying away. He twisted in midair like a cat—

—and would have made a perfect three-point landing if his adversary had not followed up with another attack. This second strike smashed him flat against the ground.

There was a second of stillness before he got back to his feet. His red-clad opponent approached then, her gait relaxed and easy. "With practice, you will be an adversary to fear," she commended him. "It is only reasonable. Your kind has little experience with biotics."

* * *

Miranda escorted the cloaked ex-Talons back inside the ship. After the airlock closed behind them and they de-cloaked, she asked: "What did you find out?"

" _Nada útil_ ," Sombra said flatly. "This woman Cyrule is clean. She's part of a group of Matriarchs but has kept herself apart from politics. Like other Justicar shrine-keepers, as it turns out. I've bugged the local network to sniff every message going in or out, so if there's someone here to spy on us we should know." A scowl. " _O tal vez no._ If they simply relay their messages verbally we're screwed."

"Anything of interest happening here?" Reyes asked.

"Genji took on a Justicar and lost. It was a close match, though."

Wrex approached the newcomers. He did not like being left to rot in the ship, but no Krogan had set foot on Cyone since the Rebellions and the local authorities were determined to keep it that way. "It was some thousand-year-odd Matriarch. That he put up a fight at all is no small thing." A grunt. "I didn't believe he had it in him."

Reyes took off his coat and walked down the corridor and towards the CIC. "He's a ninja. A real one, not a cheap blockbuster copycat. You know about them?"

"Heard a thing or two. A coward's way to fight, traps and ambushes."

Sombra snickered. "Where's the fun in playing fair?"

"I know," Wrex admitted. "You don't plan for a fair fight if you want to win. My father taught me that lesson all too well."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** helped immensely when I was stuck trying to figure out the bout between Genji and Samara. The brainstorming session I held with **kishinokurobi** was also very useful. Kudos to you, guys!


	32. Citadel: Arrest

Cyone

"Jacqueline, this is the Lady Samara," Sashaya the shrine keeper introduced them to each other one day later. "She will be your sparring partner. We were told you don't have any kind of formal instruction on biotics, so think of this as a warm-up session. She will mostly evade your attacks, and retaliate only in ways she sees you could stop."

Subject Zero looked at the keeper dubiously. "I can go all out? Are you sure?"

Cyrule smiled. It seemed to the human biotic a condescending gesture. "Lady Samara is over a thousand years old. She is very experienced."

 _You don't think I can take her._ Jacqueline felt insulted. _We'll see about that._

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

The Asari bowed her head obsequiously. "Please follow us outside."

As a garden world mostly off-limits to non-Asari, Cyone had intentionally avoided the typical megalopolises of other planets. Instead, the land was dotted with small hamlets and villages built in harmony with the surrounding environs, and this Justicar shrine was no exception, set as it was atop one of many hills crisscrossed by small streams.

Some two hundred steps away from the shrine entrance was an open, untended parcel of land that was clearly used as some kind of training grounds; it was relatively level and only some shrubbery and wild flowers grew on it. Rocks of different sizes lay about.

Jacqueline took a good look around, noticing once again that her head was scarcely aching, the kind of pain she had learned to interpret as a sign of an impending migraine. She scowled, reminding herself that was the best Ziegler could do without compromising her reflexes and biotic control, and focused herself. At once she went ablaze, a solid bubble of blue light materializing around her, then thinning as the surrounding landscape became tinged in azure and pebbles and small rocks started floating freely.

Five steps away, Samara stood imperturbable, her face the same relaxed mask that Genji had seen before his fight.

"Whenever you're ready," the shrine keeper encouraged her.

Subject Zero looked into her Asari opponent's eyes. They were empty, relaxed, fixed on hers, neither antagonistic nor bored. Not at all like the looks she had been used to receiving. Each time she had been prodded to use her skills on some hapless victim, the poor soul had had a face of utterly consuming terror that had become disagreeably familiar to her.

It was not the case with Samara.

She did not really know what to do, but even she had learned that there were times to put out your best on your very first strike, and there were times to hold some strength in reserve. This was one of the latter occasions. With a few whirling motions, she refocused her null gravity field into a near-solid barrier and tossed some kinetic bolts at the Asari. Her opponent did not move at all, so there was a brief expression of surprise as the attacks rocked her on her feet, not piercing her defense, but weakening it.

Samara recovered instantly, having learned that this untrained amateur was deceptively strong. She switched her stance to a defensive posture, leaning on her rear leg and the tip of her front foot aiming at Jacqueline, and lazily pointing at her opponent with the index and middle fingers of her right hand. But other than that, she again did nothing.

The human biotic had a little knowledge of Asari biotic arts and their stances, courtesy of a few spars with Valena, but it was enough for her to figure out that Samara had put up a reinforced defense. Her next attack, then, was not a kinetic bolt, but a cascade of blasts snaking up towards her enemy, more of a nuisance than of a direct assault, meant to keep her target busy while she gathered energy and hurled it at her as an unstable, rippling toroid—

There was a brief, stroboscopic series of light pulses as a detonation sent debris flying every which way, one or two steps away from where Samara stood. Jacqueline at once readied herself, not believing for a second that she had bested her foe.

The bright, blue-purplish dot arced for her head from behind the cloud of smoke. The human biotic at once riposted with a single clapping of her hands that produced a tremendous thunder and exploded the attack before it could hit her.

The next attack almost caught her by surprise as she felt her skin tingling, and noticed a few pebbles and stones floating upwards. With her opponent concealed behind the dust cloud, she barely had a split-second to expand her defensive bubble before Samara, turned into a living cannonball, smashed herself against it, clenched fist first. Without giving her any time to retaliate, she bounced upwards into the sky like some flea, and then propelled herself downwards, again fist clenched for a powerful blow. This time, Jacqueline pounced out of the way, and her opponent's attack only found the ground. There was a deafening blast as again debris flew every which way.

* * *

From their vantage point on a balcony in the shrine building, the Starwatch crew observed the bout.

"Looks like a fight from one of these vintage cartoons you like so much," Shepard said in the way of Astrid. The blonde woman grinned, but before she could reply, her superior's omni-tool buzzed:

" _¡Coronel_ Shepard, _lo encontré!_ " Sombra's exulting voice rang on her earbud. "An acolyte is reporting about the duel to our target. I have pinpointed the location, take a look."

Aaliyah set the portable computer to feed the data directly to her retinas via laser beams, then opened the attached file. It was a map of Cyone, depicting their location and that of their target. Immediately she noticed that the place was remote, and quite distant from the expected landing location of Rana Thanoptis' ship.

"Call off the duel," she instructed Valena on the spot, then talked to the hacker in Spanish: "How reliable is your intercept?"

Sombra laughed. "You need to work on that accent, _coronel._ I've hacked the terminal on the other side. It's not Benezia who's using it, but she was in the same room."

"That's enough," she decided. "Stay on your toes and—"

"Tell you about anything, _sí, coronel._ " The hacker cut the link, surprising Shepard a bit, but then she understood she was just saving her time. She turned towards Sashaya. The keeper and her fellows had ignored the exchange, absorbed with the ongoing combat — or so they appeared to be. There was concern etched on their faces:

"Why that look?" she asked.

For the slimmest of instants, Cyrule seemed startled. "You must excuse us, colonel. It was no exaggeration on your part. Your student is expending energy at an incredible rate, and she is not even flushed. Certainly no untrained beginner can match that."

* * *

"Hey, that's fucking cheating!" Jacqueline hollered. "Come back here!"

But the Asari would not descend, hovering some five or six meters up in the air instead.

"If that's how you want to go about it, fine!" the biotic girl snarled as she used her gift to levitate a rock and toss it at the Asari, then another, another and another in quick succession — and only then she noticed that, while the first rock was barely half a meter wide, the last one could flatten a hovercar. And she had flung it at the Justicar like a bullet without a second thought.

Samara was unfazed. She zipped around in midair, dodging the increasingly larger boulders Jacqueline tossed at her.

* * *

"That's bloody fast," Tracer commented.

"As fast as you?" Amari asked.

She shrugged. "Can't say from this far, but seems that way."

"How does she manage?" the keeper asked keenly. "Is she taking any kind of performance-enhancing drugs? What about her diet?"

"You can ask her yourself, mistress," Valena answered politely. "We need you to call off the duel. Someone here is spying on it."

Immediately she turned around and shouted a booming command at her acolytes. A couple bowed their acknowledgment and jumped right off the balcony.

* * *

Jacqueline saw them coming. Samara had seen them as well, apparently, for she had dropped her defensive stance and was slowly floating down to the ground. Something was wrong. The newcomers yelled a few words she did not understand, but her opponent did, and turned towards Subject Zero: "Your commander has requested we suspend the exercise."

The human biotic scowled. "Bitch. I was having fun."

The Asari gave her a small nod. "You did seem to."

"I don't remember a time when I was allowed to go all out like this."

They walked back to the shrine, skirting the craters their confrontation had produced, and arrived when Shepard and the keeper were exiting through the front door, followed by their respective cohorts:

"So what's up?" Jacqueline demanded.

"Not here," Shepard replied curtly. "Everyone, get on the ship. Tracer, start her up."

"Aye aye, luv," was Oxton's response, and she vanished where she stood.

"Mistress Shepard," Sashaya said politely, "I understand being spied upon is not pleasant, but is that a reason to leave?"

"It has nothing to do with you. Forgive me if I gave you that impression. But we came here with a mission and we are going to do what we came here to do."

Cyrule glared at the Starwatch colonel. "I wonder what that business is that you risked a diplomatic incident by manipulating us."

"Join us for a minute aboard, and I'll tell you."

The shrine keeper obliged, biding her acolytes to wait for her. Once they were all on the CIC of the _Girls' Night Out,_ Shepard explained:

"Our mission here is to apprehend a war criminal," she said bluntly. "Matriarch Benezia. She has colluded with the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, and Elysium was attacked as a result."

"Do you have her location?" Samara asked.

"The Four Peaks Hideaway."

Sashaya was at once concerned. "The Hideaway is a retreat where high-level political figures gather to discuss policy. There's one such event taking place right now. Any unannounced visit will be seen as a serious breach of etiquette, to say the least."

Jacqueline's eyes blazed upon hearing that. Shepard, apparently, was of a similar mind: "Those b—… those _relics_ can take their complaints and shove them. Benezia's partner in crime razed a whole colony to get his hands on a Prothean artifact. They can help or we can pull rank on them. Ball's in their court now."

"Colonel?" Liara spoke up, her voice brittle, "while I… I share your posture, we should not dismiss mistress Cyrule's warnings. Think for a second what would happen if a deputation of aliens stormed a meeting in… Davos, is it? Think what would happen if they barged in to arrest an official taking part in a summit there."

Samara asked for a moment of silence with a raised hand. "If a Justicar enforces your warrant, no one will dare to raise any objections. I will go with you."

* * *

When Liara had likened the Four Peaks retreat to the highly exclusive resorts in Switzerland, she had not been wrong. It was an immense complex of cottages set atop a cluster of peaks, cozy small houses built next to or even carved outright into sheer cliffs, with the centerpiece being a large and elegant building reserved for political gatherings, a spire-like construction that seemed to grow out of the mountain itself.

And it was packed tight. The security measures were staggering, as evinced by the flight of Mantis gunships that moved to intercept them:

"Incoming Alliance vessel, you are not authorized to operate in this airspace. Refusal to change course and follow us will be interpreted as hostile intent, to be met with lethal force. You have twenty seconds to comply."

"This is Shilyna T'Perro aboard the _Girls' Night Out,_ from the Citadel Special Tactics and Recon office," the Asari answered sharply. "We are on a Council-sanctioned mission. We demand you immediately stand down and let us proceed unhindered. Transmitting clearances now."

"Everyone's on edge here," Martinsson noted.

Amari snorted. "They should be. We're coming to crash their party."

"Approaching drop point alpha," Tracer warned.

"Talon squad, you're up! Get ready!" Astrid bellowed.

"Acknowledged your order, ma'am," came the reply from the gunship pilot. "Is there anything you require from us, over."

"No ships are allowed to land or depart without my express authorization," T'Perro instructed. "You are weapons free on anyone who tries to violate lockdown. Acknowledge."

"Copy your weapons free order, ma'am."

The corvette slowed down to assume a hovering position some scarce ten meters from ground level, waiting to get final clearance from the landing pad.

"Talon team reports a successful insertion," Mercy informed.

"I don't like trusting former terrorists with this kind of job," T'Perro muttered stonily.

"Neither do we," Tracer agreed, "but that expertise is precisely what makes them good for this."

"They'd better be as good as you say. Any huntress squad worth its salt would make it triply sure that the single available escape route was secure."

"Shep will keep a tight leash on them," Astrid said confidently. "Let them focus on their part of the mission. We have enough on our plate as it is."

"Not going to argue that point," Garrus mused. "Especially when they're waiting for us like that." He pointed at the display depicting the landing pad: fifty Asari soldiers, loaded for bear, were arrayed around the platform edges.

"That's our job," Miranda manifested.

"So let's go do it." Martinsson stood up. "Mercy, you're on mission control. Keep us posted."

The looks they got from the assembled huntresses as they walked down the boarding ramp were lethal. An officer stepped forward: "What is the meaning of this!" she demanded irately. "How dare you barbarians barge in like that! Highly sensitive negotiations are being conducted here, the Matriarchy has no time for your childish endeavors!"

Then T'Perro walked into view, and a hush descended on the place as the huntresses recognized her. Her icy eyes cast daggers at the officer: "Our 'childish endeavors' are sanctioned Citadel policy. For your sake and that of your troopers I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that, and instead will report if asked that you led me to Matriarch Benezia." The Spectre shoved her face into the soldier's. " _Posthaste._ "

The officer wilted under Shilyna's merciless glare. "O-of course, ma'am. They're, er, gathered on the main conference hall. This way."

* * *

Silence was instantaneous as T'Perro walked into the conference hall. It was, as most of the Starwatch crew noticed, not too different a place from a theatre, with a raised stage and seats surrounding it.

"Mistress T'Perro, welcome," the single Asari standing on the center of the stage said with a dry voice. "Your arrival was quite intempestive and unexpected. What brings you to us in such fashion?"

Shilyna pointed at her old teacher, who was standing impassible next to the stage, surrounded by her colleagues. "I have orders from the Citadel Council to arrest Benezia T'Soni."

The Matriarch on the stage went by the name of Junia Cirron, and the Spectre knew her well. She was one of the oldest living Asari, and one never to put much trust into the Citadel. As such, she was not impressed. "And what might the charges be?"

"Conspiracy. She has consorted with a traitor that nearly instigated a war with the Alliance. Her support enabled Saren Arterius to pursue his schemes."

Still Junia was not moved. "Those are very serious charges, mistress T'Perro. What evidence do you have to sustain them?"

Martinsson exchanged glances with Oxton and Shimada. No Citadel citizen they had asked about it would have dared to contest a Spectre's orders. But a Spectre's authority had seemed a much bigger deal back in the Presidium than here.

But then again, this was the same bunch that had rebuffed their attempts to recruit the very best xenoarchaeologists available to make some sense of what Shepard had gotten beamed into her head by the Prothean relic. _That's what that traitor Vasir said, right? The big shots can still snub a Spectre. Nothing ever changes._

Shilyna seemed to know as well that how effective Spectre authority was here depended on how forceful the Spectre was. That was why she did not bother listing the evidence, and instead walked down the aisle towards the stage: "Don't waste my time. I don't answer to you. The only people I answer to is a quarter of the galaxy away. You try to obstruct me, I'll bring you in too. You make too much of a fuss, I'll shoot you. Try me."

Liara had purposefully remained out of sight so far, but Shilyna's words jolted her, and she recalled what had been once discussed about how Saren would go as far as arranging for her mother's 'disposal' if it proved necessary. She worked her way through the onlookers and started scanning those in sight, looking for a sign of something wrong—

Tracer noticed her sudden outburst of anxiety, so she walked out of the throng and stopped time. Roughly four hundred Asari between dignitaries, aides and soldiers crammed the hall. There were enough guns in that place to stock the armory of their ship three times over, but how many of those would be good enough for the task of assassinating Benezia? Everyone here would sport heavy-duty kinetic barriers, so a sidearm would be extremely unlikely to do the job, barring similarly unlikely specialized ammo or some other kind of biotic thing she did not know about.

But then, their target's biotic proficiency was well known, so such gimmicks would have half a chance to work at best. No, a pistol would not cut it. Something bigger. A bomb? One had almost killed her. But getting one in that place required compromising very specific people. What were the chances of that? It was possible, but was it probable?

A larger gun, like a sniper rifle? That would do the job, but if that was the way to do it, then it would not take place here. To their credit, the huntresses had done a thorough job at forestalling that: all balconies were manned, all vantage points accounted for. Now, once the target had been forced to vacate the premises…

What were the chances of Benezia acquiescing? She approached and studied her and her entourage. Zero. So if Saren had taken precautions to dispose of her ally before she could endanger his position… he would take into account what the Spectres would do to bring her in… and the reaction on part of the Matriarchy…

She unfroze time. "Actual, this is Oxton. Benezia must not be allowed to leave the building. I have reason to think a sharpshooter is poised to eliminate her."

"We cannot interfere with T'Perro," Martinsson protested.

"Mother!" Liara called out. Everyone was startled. "Saren is… has arranged for someone to kill you! Right here! Come with us! Please!"

Mother and daughter looked at each other. The elder T'Soni was not moved.

"How cheap of you. You brought along both my old student and my daughter. What did you hope to accomplish?" She snorted.

Junia intervened then: "We have no wish to antagonize the Council or their agents, mistress T'Perro, but we cannot release an important member of the Asari republican government into custody without an extensive review of the evidence." She turned towards Benezia: "Until we give a ruling, she will be secluded into her quarters in isolation from anyone else. Matriarch T'Soni, you will go now."

"Stop." Samara walked out of the throng and down the aisle to join Shilyna. Thunderous silence followed. "I have already perused the evidence. The Code is clear. Matriarch Benezia is guilty. If she does not willingly submit to judgment then I will exact justice for her transgressions myself."

The Matriarch's dozen-strong security detail closed ranks around her.

With a pulling motion, Samara yanked one of the commandos guarding Benezia towards her. The others reacted on the spot raising their weapons and loosing biotic attacks on the Justicar in turn, but T'Perro and Danaan parried them. Chaos erupted at once as the rest of the Matriarchs and their escorts raced to get to safety or out of the way while the Compact and Benezia's guards faced off.

"Mother!" Liara called out again. Benezia did not heed her, instead stalking off to leave the theatre-like hall through a side door while her guards held the Compact at bay.

* * *

"She's going your way!" Astrid alerted Shepard. "Benezia plus two commandos, the rest are holding the doorway from us! She must not get past you, Tracer believes Saren may have posted a sniper to take her out!"

"Copy that," Aaliyah acknowledged her second-in-command, then gestured at her squad to get ready. Lawson, Reyes and the biotic girl were with her. Sombra had found a tech locker from which she could hack into the local security grid, which she had reinforced with a hefty supply of sensors for good measure. Widowmaker was outside, perched atop a peak from which she had a clear view of their escape route. "Miss Lacroix, locate and neutralize the enemy shooter."

" _Compris._ " It was easier said than done, though. On top of the murderously forbidding conditions of the mountaintops, there were multiple Asari sharpshooter teams posted to ward off assassination attempts, and any one of them could have been planted by Saren. "I suggest we alert the local security force if we haven't already."

Reyes snorted. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Noted. You still focus on finding our assassin."

" _Oui._ " She pulled her visor over her eyes and started scanning the place from atop her vantage point. " _Allez, montre-toi…_ "

"Remember what I told you," Miranda said quietly towards Jacqueline.

"I know, I know!" was the sharp retort, uttered through gritted teeth. Lawson had insisted on that point: against Benezia, her unique biotic strength and stamina would be of limited value if she made a single mistake, and with the little formal training she had a mistake is what she was most likely to make if she tried to confront her head on. So she was to be their shield until help arrived or their target exhausted herself.

"She's coming!" Sombra alerted. Nobody acknowledged her; they all waited for her to turn around the corner in the hallway, muscles tense—

The two commandos saw them first, Benezia shortly afterwards. The three of them stopped dead in their tracks.

"Matriarch Benezia, we're here under Compact authority," Shepard said tersely. The next few words came out with difficulty: "Come with us willingly and you won't be harmed."

At once her guards sought cover, smashing down the doors to the adjoining rooms. The ancient Matriarch did not. She stood in the middle of the hallway and turned immediately ablaze, blinding light coalescing on her hands as she floated upwards into the air.

Then she unleashed her attack. A cluster of coruscating black orbs blossomed into existence—

—and a flurry of kinetic bolts detonated them spectacularly before they could pull the Compact crew into their grasp.

Jacqueline grinned dangerously: "Try someone in your own league, you bitch."

Benezia did not answer the challenge. Instead, she flicked her hand, and a single dot of purple-blue light blazed towards Jacqueline, the thunder in its wake tearing layers of paint and masonry from the ceiling and walls. The dot collided with her barrier and exploded violently in a flash of lightning. Dust flooded the hallway.

"You'll have to do better than that!"

The elder Asari's left eye briefly twitched in anger. She said something towards her commandos that the Compact crew did not catch, but they at once turned around and fled, running back the hallway leading to the theatre. Then she turned ablaze again until she appeared to be made out of solid, blinding blue-white light. Cracks snaked up the walls as the floor quivered.

"It's an increased gravity field!" Miranda alerted. She had some knowledge of that technique and could attempt a similar feat, albeit on a much smaller scale.

"I got that!" At once Jacqueline bellowed as she unleashed her own field to counter Benezia's.

"We can't stay here!" Shepard yelled over the catastrophic roar, feeling sick as the biotics pitted their strength against each other and gravity wildly swung between near zero and crushingly heavy. Reyes was even more affected than her, because his near-solid composition was more vulnerable to such swings.

"I can't—do anything with—this—going on—!" The former Blackwatch commander's voice came off syncopated as he struggled to talk.

"I'll get you out of here!" Aaliyah used her hardlight caster to project a coating around Reyes. The man at once understood and collapsed his form down to a formless puddle on the ground, which Shepard collected into an orb. She then turned towards Lawson: "We're out of our depth here! It's up to the two of you now!"

"Go, colonel, we'll cover you!"

Shepard hated turning her back on them, but she had known from the get-go that when that confrontation came she would be dead weight, so she raced away. "Friendlies coming out!" she warned Lacroix.

" _Compris, mon colonel._ "

She was some twenty steps from the exit when the hallway widened into a security checkpoint of sorts, and she had an idea. She released Reyes, pulled out the engineering extension for her hardlight caster from her hip satchel, plugged it in, and started placing turrets on the ceiling and the sides of the room.

"You think that is going to stop her?" Gabriel asked after reforming.

"Citadel races hate hardlight," she replied through gritted teeth. "They barely know how to deal with it. You ought to know that already."

The quivering became noticeably stronger, as did the rumble and the roar. Dust fell through cracks in the ceiling everywhere, but the place still held.

"Done!" she yelled. "Let's get out of here!"

They both ran. Reyes was through the doors first—

" _Ah, je te vois._ " Lacroix's inhumanly fast reaction was not enough to stop the Asari shooter from pulling the trigger, but it sufficed to make her shot go wild. The thin stream of molten iron blew the assassin's arm away and turned her weapon into a jumble of metal shards. "Enemy sniper neutralized," she reported coolly.

"Copy that," Shepard acknowledged, a fraction of her brain stunned by how close that one had been, but the rest of it was crazed with worry about the people she had left inside the building.

"Colonel!" Lawson called urgently. "We cannot hold here for long!"

"Where are T'Perro and the Justicar already?!" she yelled on the open radio channel.

"We cannot break through!" was the Spectre's angry answer. "Ten commandos is no small thing, colonel! You have to stop her yourselves!"

 _Awesome. Okay._ "Lacroix, can you wound her only?"

"I can't guarantee that," Widowmaker replied in a clinically cool answer. "If her barriers are down or weakened I can use a low-power shot, but there's no certainty it will work if her defenses are at full strength."

"It will have to do," she decided. "Lawson, Nought, disengage and retreat!"

A few instants after she had given the order, part of the building collapsed in a cloud of dust. Shepard's blood chilled, but a few seconds afterward three people burst out of the passageway and into the open — Miranda, Subject Zero, and Sombra. They were all unscathed.

"She's incredibly strong!" Jacqueline groaned. She was covered in perspiration and slightly panting.

"She's a thousand-something years old Matriarch, it's incredible that you held her back," Aaliyah pointed out. "How's she?"

"The confrontation taxed her more than it did miss Nought here," Lawson informed, "but she nearly got us crushed."

"I saw that." At that moment, her omni-tool flashed alerts as the hardlight turrets found a target and fired. An inhumanly powerful scream assaulted their eardrums and echoed on the peaks and cliffs around them.

"Come into my parlor…" Widowmaker whispered to herself, as she waited expectantly for their target to walk into the open.

When she did, it was a surprise. She was limping, trying not to lean on her right leg, as she clutched her left breast with her right hand, the other arm hanging loose on the side and bleeding profusely. Her whole body was crisscrossed with burns from the hardlight beams.

"…said the spider to the fly." Lacroix's rifle boomed. Her shot blew a gaping hole through Benezia's left leg. The horribly injured Asari collapsed on the spot.

"Target is down, target is down!" Shepard hollered on the radio. "Mercy, get over here! Anika, you too!"

"You were right," Gabriel admitted. "Thanks for getting me out."

"Think nothing of it," Aaliyah dismissed it. "Now to deal with the shitstorm this is going to cause…"

* * *

 _Author's note:_ This one was hard to write. It would have taken longer to pull off without the talks with **kishinokurobi.** **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** contributed their usual but no less appreciated proofreading and comments.

Also, thanks to _you_ for reading.

Merry Christmas and happy new year, everyone!


	33. Citadel: Red Herring

_Girls' Night Out_

Shepard, Martinsson, T'Perro, Samara, Vakarian and Danaan stood on one side of the table in the communications room. On the other, the hologram projector displayed the images of the Citadel Councillors and the Alliance Prime Minister.

"We just spoke with Matriarch Cirron," Paratus informed coolly. "Thirteen people were injured during the incident, four of them critically."

"Just the partial destruction of a cultural landmark such as the Four Peaks Hideaway would be reason enough for the Asari to howl for blood," the Salarian Councillor pointed out.

"I do not yet know what my government will demand in compensation for this… mess," Melara said quietly, "but they are angry, and we will have to placate them."

Shilyna was furious. "Well, _excuse me,_ _councillors!_ " She slammed the table with both hands and yelled: "What did you expect? We warned time and time again that apprehending Benezia would be an ugly affair if the Matriarchy did not assist us. So guess what?"

"Then you should have waited for a better opportunity!" Paratus boomed. "You out of all people should have known it!"

Aaliyah had put on a stolid mask, behind which her mind relentlessly picked at the events that had transpired at the Hideaway. _A full-blown, no-nonsense disaster,_ that had been T'Perro's angry assessment of the outcome. In Shepard's own opinion, they had gotten off lightly. A few wounded and some material losses was a very cheap bill for apprehending a biotic powerful enough to be considered a force of nature.

But of course, since it had been an operation involving the hated humans soiling an Asari core world and 'irreparably' damaging a cultural monument, the Councillors would seize the chance to get back at them for the political fallout they had gotten from the Elysium incident.

"This level of collateral damage is unacceptable," Dalatrass Linron said in reproach. "This is far from the finesse and skill we were persuaded to expect after you exposed Saren. And yet I remember that this is a problem that has plagued human agencies for decades now, isn't it?"

"I must respectfully differ." Shastri's stony glare at Linron communicated very clearly just how 'respectful' his disagreement was. "May I remind you that over five hundred colonists were killed during Saren's attack on Elysium, whereas this incident resulted in thirteen wounded, none of which were due to negligence or actions on part of our operatives. It is the position of the Systems Alliance that the cost for apprehending Benezia was deplorable, but within acceptable margins given the limited means at the Compact's disposal."

Shepard was grateful for the Prime Minister's defence, but as the senior Starwatch officer on the scene, she could not quietly accept it. "Whatever results from this, the responsibility is mine. My agents acted according to directives I gave. If anything, I believe Lacroix and Oxton should be distinguished for the part they played into foiling Saren's plan to dispose of Benezia."

Melara gave her a reluctant nod. "I agree. It would have been a catastrophe if we paid so high a price for no gain."

Both Paratus and Linron tried to argue against it, but Samara overruled them: "Prime Minister Shastri is correct. Matriarch Cirron was as intransigent and unyielding as Benezia and acted irresponsibly by allowing our target to resist arrest."

The Councillors stared angrily at the Justicar, then looked at Shepard and T'Perro. "Bringing her along was a mistake," Paratus said coolly. "Justicars cannot be reasoned with. If she had not been present, a negotiated solution could have been reached. You do realize that if she had not been with you this whole headache may have been avoided."

"But you'd be faced with a much worse crisis one later on," Valena retorted matter-of-factly. "If the Matriarchs had shielded Benezia further, a standoff would have ensued, with virtually everyone in the Hideaway held hostage by her."

"The Spectres would have made an example out of the situation and the casualty count would have been a body count instead," Garrus supported her. "One in the hundreds."

"Don't you forget I _am_ a Justicar myself," T'Perro warned sharply.

"That never escapes us," was Linron's scathing retort. "I surmise you have yet to interrogate Benezia?"

"That will have to wait a little," Shepard answered slowly. "Our medical team was able to stabilize her, but she hasn't regained consciousness yet. For the moment, we expect to learn about her activities and agenda by interrogating her guards and adjutants."

* * *

Shepard had thought the day had had enough bad news already, but when Reyes and Sombra approached her as she was having a cup of coffee with her second in the mess hall, she realised she had been mistaken and the worst had yet to come.

"You're going to love this," Gabriel announced with a curt voice that told Aaliyah something completely different. He gestured at Sombra: "Tell her."

The hacker, Aaliyah noted immediately, was far from her usual smug self. On the contrary, she appeared… dejected. "We've been tricked," she said flatly. "Everything about Benezia was a ruse. Rana Thanoptis' ship was attacked by mercenaries hired by Benezia herself acting on Saren's orders."

Martinsson paled. "Son of a bitch…"

Shepard also blanched, but she kept her features rigidly under control. "Explain."

"It was a false flag attack. Neither Thanoptis nor her crew suspected they had been attacked on purpose by their employers. That's why nobody saw the lie, not Surrakar, not T'Perro, not us." She cast her eyes downwards. "Not me, either. _Lo siento._ "

The Starwatch colonel did not know Sombra much, and she did not trust her much either — purposefully keeping intel about Cerberus from her did not help — but she had grown to appreciate her incredible knack for hacking and intelligence gathering. Saren, apparently not only a combat powerhouse, seemed to appreciate it too: he had correctly anticipated the superior spycraft skills the Compact would have at its disposal, like a past master at espionage would do, and manufactured a diversion that would pass all scrutiny simply because the only ones who knew it was a diversion were Benezia and himself.

"Don't blame yourself. Our enemy has turned out to be much craftier than we had been led to believe." Actually, she was blaming herself. _I should have studied him more, but we were buzzing across the galaxy, putting out fires…_

… _and in this fashion doing exactly what he wanted,_ she told herself bitterly.

"How did you find this out?" she asked Sombra.

"She handled her communications with Saren exclusively through a QEC isolated from any other networks. It was in her residence on Cyone, not on the Hideaway. I could not have accessed it remotely." Clearly, though, the brown-skinned girl-nanite collective-whatever still believed it had been her fault.

Shepard struggled to box away her combination of confusion and panic, if only for a minute: "Look at me," she ordered with a hard voice. The hacker obeyed reluctantly. "We were all fooled. Not just you. Saren crafted a ruse this elaborate _because_ anything else would have failed thanks to you."

" _Sí. Sólo que olvidé que siempre hay alguien más inteligente._ "

"You did get too confident, that's true," the Starwatch colonel allowed. "Learn from it. It won't be the last time he outsmarts us." She tapped her omni-tool. "Mercy, summon everyone here."

"Yes, Shepard."

Instants of dreary silence followed as Aaliyah, Astrid and Sombra evaded each other's eyes. "So…" Martinsson said, unnerved by the silence, "Saren bought himself time… Time for what?"

"To advance any one of his plots," Gabriel answered hoarsely. "Raising an army of rachni. Or getting the Geth under his command into position for his next move."

That idea by itself was unsettling enough, but Reyes' deep and unnerving voice somehow made it worse.

"We need to bring the Quarians aboard," Shepard half-mumbled while her mind wrestled with Astrid's question.

Reyes sat across the table. "The Council will go ballistic. Actually, wait a minute here… why haven't they said anything about that cyborg chick the docs butchered up?"

"Because they don't know yet." Aaliyah's eyes were still glazed, her mind scarcely paying the assassin any attention. "The Spectres agreed to keep it under wraps until we figured out a way to inform the Quarian Admiralty."

The man smirked coldly. "So this problem is going to blow up in our faces right at the worst possible time."

Our _faces,_ she noted distantly. _Not_ your. Our. _Would you look at that…_

Aaliyah knew she should ask herself how cool she was with having the man that had massacred her squads consider himself part of the team now. But she did not. Sombra's words had shaken her into picturing herself as a bug caught in Saren's web, and she was struggling to break free of the spell.

"I fucked up," she said simply. "He played me most of all."

Reyes glared at her. "I'm the reigning galactic champion at fucking up. I don't think I'll ever get to totally clean up my act, but I'm not throwing the towel. You gave me that. So you fucked up, fine, everyone fucks up. Choke it down. Get smashed, have someone beat the crap out of you. Grab your blue chick and tell her to fuck your brains out. But then get back on your feet and act like the officer you are."

Astrid was white with shock. She eyed Shepard intently, trying to figure out which way she would jump.

Aaliyah's eyes meet Gabriel's. They had a dreamy, fey glow. "I never thought I'd say this to you," she said out loud slowly and clearly, "but thank you."

* * *

Minutes later, Shepard ordered Sombra to repeat what she had told her to the rest of the Compact members present. Predictably, there were a few exclamations of dismay, but other than that they received the news with shocked silence.

"My fault," Shilyna uttered at last, to everyone's surprise. She laughed mirthlessly. *You want to bet the bastard predicted how I would act to the letter?"

"I'm not hearing it," Aaliyah said sharply. "This asshole has played us enough. We have to step up our game to beat him, and we have to start right fucking now."

Liara shot her a puzzled look, expecting the ancient Spectre to explode at the reproach, but T'Perro actually took it with equanimity.

"I made a glaring mistake after Elysium, and that was not sitting down to think what Saren himself was going to do," Shepard continued. "So we might as well do it now. He has tricked us into chasing after Benezia, but what for? Reyes here suggested he used the distraction to raise his rachni army or position the Geth under his command. But the week we've lost chasing this lead isn't enough time to organize a whole army, supposing he's already bred enough of the damn things to have one in the first place. I don't believe he has. So I think we should expect Geth raids, if they haven't happened already. Thoughts?"

The Compact agents exchanged glances. Amari reluctantly acknowledged Reyes' guess: "I can't find fault with… his… assessment. I also agree that it's not likely we'll see rachni deployed anytime soon. I do wonder what would he target if he sent Geth on raids."

"He attacked Elysium because of the Prothean artifact stashed on the Watchpoint," Astrid reasoned. "Taking that into account, we shouldn't be surprised if he raided other worlds with Prothean ruins."

"There are plenty of those to go around, both in our space and yours." Liara used her omni-tool to bring up a map of the galaxy, and started highlighting systems.

"And those are the worlds we know of." Garrus studied the map. The young Asari had marked over twenty systems on it.

"Interesting… over half of those are either colonies or candidates for colonization," Ziegler noted. "Truly, we are not breaking new ground here."

"If we stop Saren and give peace a chance, those places may actually flourish," Amari said in a rare wistful moment.

"That's our job." Miranda, as usual, was fully engaged into the precise and efficient persona that showed no weaknesses. She stared intently at the map before saying: "If Arterius wanted to spread panic, Eden Prime is a perfect target for that. He has already shown he has vessels capable of stealth at his disposal. This colony, being deep into Alliance territory, has only the most basic of garrisons."

Tracer studied the chart, thinking, wrestling with the difficult task of trying to think like an enemy whose goals and motivations they only knew in broad strokes. "What about the Fehl colony?" she asked. "Isn't there a fully functional Prothean installation there?"

"That place has been known about for a while now. If there was something of interest for Saren there, he would have raided it first," Liara noted.

Vakarian pointed at a system the young T'Soni had highlighted on the Attican Beta cluster. "There's an orbital telescope array built here. It was used to map distant worlds before we discovered relays that would reach them, and nowadays it works as an early warning system."

"Guarding against what?" Reyes asked piercingly. It was right on the border of colonized Alliance space, and literally half a galaxy away from the closest Council world.

"You," was Garrus' candid answer.

Lacroix gave him an aside look. "And you mention it because…"

"When the construction crew started building the control station, they unearthed a Prothean complex. Most of it remains unexplored. The planet is remote, the dig itself is difficult to reach, and the environment is very hostile. There always were better and more conveniently located places to explore. But if the place is of Saren's interest… he would quite likely knock out the telescope relays."

"And the Council would see it as an Alliance attack?" Amari hazarded a guess.

Sombra was withdrawn and quiet, a far cry from her usually condescending persona. Even her voice was devoid of all pride and smugness: "There are many things missing here, but I get the feeling we're running ahead of ourselves. We're gambling on the assumption that Saren is drawn to Prothean ruins and relics."

Wrex had not spoken yet, but now he did, with an ironic edge to his words: "You 'get the feeling'? Good. That's the most intelligent thing I've heard so far. Saren outsmarted you and what I see now here is that you want to get even. As we are now, we're likely to just blunder again if we try to anticipate him."

"So what do you suggest?" Layali asked crossly. "That we sit back and wait?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," was the flat answer. "Except for our commandos here, I've lived more than all of you combined. And being thick-headed and stubborn hasn't stopped me from learning to spot a disaster being born. This is one. If I was giving orders here, I'd tell you to sit tight, wait until we can interrogate Benezia, and keep your ears and eyes open. We don't know squat. The enemy has the initiative until we change that."

Shilyna looked at the Krogan with wonder. "I told myself there had to be a reason for Shepard to let you stick around."

Reyes raised a hand. "I'm sold."

"I'm not," Tracer objected. "The enemy has the initiative, I agree. And he's going to run with it. At the very least, a warning should be sent."

"That's already been done," Shepard informed. "Saren has to know we have his asset. If he is smart, and so far he has proved to be, he is going to assume that we will learn what Benezia knows sooner or later, and will act accordingly. If I were him I'd relocate the rachni breeding project and send the Geth on diversionary raids to keep us distracted. So yes," she said in the way of Wrex, "we have to sit tight, stay sharp, and be ready to go at a moment's notice."

* * *

The trip back to Erinyes was uneventful, a circumstance that only increased everyone's premonitions of disaster. Anderson and Avitus Rix met Shepard and T'Perro on the docks. "Any news?" Aaliyah demanded.

"None at all," Rix replied. "Surrakar and I have people in the field, looking for anything on this bastard. Bau himself is pursuing a lead somewhere on the Terminus worlds, but we haven't heard from him. The Hierarchy military has increased its readiness level, and to a point, I understand the Alliance navy has done the same."

"That's correct," Anderson confirmed. "Though I cannot help but wonder if we've made things worse."

"How so?" Shilyna asked.

"When the defenses for Elysium were projected and built, we estimated they could hold off a determined assault for days, enough time for reinforcements to arrive. But Saren's ships blasted through them like they were made of wet cardboard. I fear raising the alert level will only lead to a higher body count in the end."

Avitus shifted his weight between his feet uncomfortably. "We'll have to wait and see."

 _When doing nothing is the best course of action… how screwed up can we be?_ Shepard shook her head. Wrex had been right: acting rashly after having been outsmarted would only worsen things.

A few steps away, an exclamation rose from the Starwatch crew, gathered around Tracer. Jacqueline noticed it: "What's it with them?" she asked Astrid.

"It's about Mei," Martinsson replied. "A friend of Genji's and Lena's, and an Overwatch legend. She was frozen for over half a century…"

"Yeah, Amari told me the story. What about her?"

"She's recovering. Tracer just got a message from her."

The young biotic was silent. Clearly the elite ranks of Starwatch were excited to hear from their friend, and she suddenly found herself envying this Mei, wanting for someone to worry about her too.

"Nobody ever cared much about me," she let out with surprising candor.

Miranda heard that. "Be grateful for that. I've got the opposite problem."

"And how's that?" Jacqueline asked with a bit of an edge.

"Everyone expected great things from me." Lawson was staring at Ziegler and Oxton as the latter read out Mei's message to her fellows. "When I succeeded, it was taken for granted. People only noticed when I failed. Now I know why."

The bald girl did not know what to make of that. "You didn't spend all your life locked up in a torture chamber."

Miranda nodded slightly. She could have argued that her idea of what her life and family were like had all been a giant lie, that lack of honest praise and little affection had bred a very persistent and stubborn inferiority complex, one made orders of magnitude worse by the discovery of how extensively engineered for perfection she had been.

But she did not. She was troubled and struggling to hold herself together, assailed by doubts, mortified by a self-whipping mind. But others had had it worse.

"No, I didn't. Sorry."

The apology was a platitude, but it struck a chord on Jacqueline. Inexpert and brash as she was, she still felt that the polite words were a sign of something wrong.

"Nothing to be sorry for," she replied in the same tone, trying to elicit the same reaction Miranda had provoked on her.

The brunette woman's plain face did not change.

* * *

"She's waking up," Palukhina warned, intently monitoring Benezia's vital signs.

"Careful now, people…" Shepard ordered softly. Liara sat alone next to the heavily restrained and bandaged Matriarch, with Anika, Shilyna, Valena, Gabriel, Miranda and Jacqueline standing a few steps away, ready to intervene if things went awry.

"Mother?" Liara whispered. "Can you hear me?"

The elder Asari opened her eyes slowly at first, but the moment her mind noticed her location and predicament she was fully awake. Her face hardened into the stony expression they had seen back at the Four Peaks Hideaway, and her whole body blazed blue—

—only to lead to puzzlement and anger: "You _barbarians!_ What kind of madness have you wrought on me?!"

Jacqueline Nought smiled coldly. "Yeah, it sucks, doesn't it? Thank our friend Reyes here. He's intercepted your fine motor skills. You're a novice again."

Benezia clenched her jaw for a second, then hesitation glittered in her eyes—and, finally, she closed them. Her face relaxed. "You have done well. As you will hear… hamstringing me is perhaps the best course of action." She tried to wiggle her fingers, but slightly shaking her hands was the best she could manage. Liara saw this, though, and reached out to hold hands with her. "Daughter… where are we?" There was some strain in her voice now, as if talking demanded effort on her part.

"Aboard an Alliance ship," she answered. "Are you in pain? Do you want some medication?"

Benezia managed to shake her head a bit within her restraints. "No, it will be of no use." She gulped in air, then raised her voice with difficulty: "Whoever is in command, listen to me… There's very little time… I have very important information for you, but after I do… You have to put me back to sleep immediately. I cannot be trusted."

 _Very little time?_ Aaliyah eyed Chakwas and Palukhina. Both medical officers also exchanged looks in puzzlement. "Noted," the Starwatch colonel acknowledged her.

The younger T'Soni held her mother's hand tighter between hers. Benezia's eyes were now screwed shut. "I fell prey to my own prejudices. I always believed you humans… you were foolishly ambitious and reckless, toying with technologies dangerous to all life in the galaxy… always trying to prove that you could do it, before asking yourselves if you should…

"Saren knew of my thoughts… they never were a secret. He approached me with a proposal. He said… he said he had secret allies, and a plan to put a stop to your dabblings.

"He invited me to join him for talks aboard his cruiser. That I… I thought then. His cruiser. But I was sorely mistaken. The ship… the ship _owns_ Saren, not the other way around. And from the moment… I got on it, it latched its grasp on me. It starts as a change in your own thoughts… Saren started talking of surgical strikes and got more and more deranged as days passed… speaking of outright genocide… I was surprised to discover how hard it was for me to summon my will to oppose him. But then it was too late.

"All I could do was to construct a safe haven in my mind… a place to salvage my last shred of free will, so that when I was… stopped… I could bear witness of what I saw. But all the while… all the while I enabled his schemes, planned with him the assault on Elysium… watched him slaughter colonists with abandon, unable to move a finger, but screaming on the inside…"

Benezia fell silent. A few breaths went by. Liara prodded her gently, tears streaming down her face: "Mother?"

Her voice came back weaker. "I apologize… This is taxing me greatly… Don't disregard my words, you have to put me back to sleep at once." She opened her eyes then and everyone could see they were irritated and bleary. "I have to contest Sovereign's will for every word I tell you. I can't endure it for long."

"Sovereign?" Garrus repeated pointedly.

"The ship that owns Saren." After a breath, she added: "A Reaper."

Not even for an instant did Shepard think of looking at Gabriel Reyes, her mind intensely focused instead on what little Liara and herself had been able to make out of the vision beamed into her mind by the Prothean monolith — and on the image, seared into her memory forever, of the immense starship cutting a swathe of destruction through the Watchpoint before crushing it outright:

"The ship that attacked Elysium?" she asked keenly. "'A' Reaper? Not just 'the' Reaper?"

"There's… countless of them, slumbering in dark space, in the void between galaxies. Sovereign… it is their agent here. It intends to bring them back, and usher in another… another genocide. They will come and harvest… harvest every spacefaring species. Just like they did with the Protheans." Her eyes fluttered and her whole face hardened for an instant, but she resisted it. "I… almost can't… Pokhara… there was another… one more Reaper there. Before Elysium, Sovereign… went there and… and set it free. My files… my journal. What you need is there. Please…"

"That's enough," Shepard ordered on the spot. At once Anika jabbed a needle on the left side of Benezia's neck. Her face at once relaxed, her stress and her demons extinguished by the dose of chemical bliss that put her into a deep slumber.

In the monitoring room next to the cell, Palukhina noted that Aaliyah had turned rigid and pale. Carefully she asked: " _Polkovnik…?_ "

The Starwatch colonel slightly shook her head. "Somehow… despite everything we've seen and heard, very deep down I still believed… still hoped that the stuff Liara—doctor T'Soni got from my head was just some delusion I dreamed up after being exposed to ancient alien tech, but now…" _Now I can't keep deluding myself._ "Our enemies just got a whole lot more dangerous." A bitter laugh trickled out. _What was it that Morrison said? They had it a lot easier._

* * *

Tali'Zorah, Shilu'Vael and Jaenna'Gisal walked into the conference hall. With the exception of Ziegler and Nought, the entire Compact crew present in Erinyes was already assembled there. Zenyatta was also there, floating in the lotus flower position as he always did. Brulirea and Lumiscant, the omnic engineers, flanked him.

"Thank you for attending," David Anderson welcomed them politely. "There are dire matters involving all of us that need to be dealt with. We need your help."

The older Jaenna blinked inside her helmet. "'Our' help? You need 'our' help? You?"

Rix took his cue from the dark-skinned officer. "We understand Tali'Zorah managed to evade detection for some time on a Geth-occupied world, enough for her to get the information that allowed us to expose Saren. We need to learn how she did it."

Tali was flustered. "It was nothing special, I just kept a very low profile and hijacked the Geth's transponder so—wait, you're going to a Geth world?"

Shepard shook her head. "Actually, it's the other way around. Saren has Geth under his command and we have reason to believe he's going to send them on raids. Both the Alliance and Council militaries are on alert."

Jaenna snorted. "I've seen this story already. The same people who cast us out fall over themselves to beg us for help. And then they get all niggardly when returning the favor. If they bother at all and don't dismiss us outright."

"You cast yourselves out when you created the Geth," T'Perro snapped acrimoniously. "And oh, what a coincidence, it's the same Geth that brought us here."

"That said, you're right," Garrus admitted. "My colleagues here would argue that the situation is pressing—"

"It's _always_ a pressing situation."

"You're right again. But we can't have you helping half-heartedly, so name your price."

"What?" That was totally unexpected. Everyone looked at Jaenna'Gisal. The older Quarian stammered: "Er, ah, I haven't thought of, uh—"

"Mistress Gisal, would you please allow me?" Zenyatta cut in to further surprise. Then the omnic addressed the Compact: "It is clear the Quarians are in need of time to frame a reply. Furthermore, probably mistress Gisal will need to consult with the Migrant Fleet Admiralty. If it will please the Quarians and the Compact, the Shambali will stand as guarantors that they will be accorded a fair reward for their help."

Anderson bowed his head. "Very well, that sounds very fair. We accept."

The Citadel officers exchanged puzzled looks. In the end, Rix also nodded. "If the Alliance stands with the Shambali, we can't object to it. Is that alright with you, mistress Gisal?"

The Quarian found herself cornered. Reluctantly she agreed. "I don't quite trust this robot, but at least we have someone to vouch for us."

"That's not good enough." Garrus shook his head. "We need your commitment. Sooner or later Saren is going to make a move and we'll have a huge panic to deal with. Either you're in or you're not. There's no halfways."

"Then I'm in," Tali'Zorah said forcefully. "If it hadn't been for us, Saren wouldn't have Geth at his beck and call to begin with." She turned towards Jaenna: "I agree that we always get the worst deal, but that is our fault. It is our responsibility to fix our mistake." She adopted a determined stance: "What do you need us to do?"

"We need to learn your methods," Anderson answered. "If we can hijack or disable Geth frames remotely, we'll be able to contain them if they raid our worlds."

"That's not going to work for long," Jaenna objected. "Geth are not fully sentient, but they are evolving rapidly. Widely deployed countermeasures will lose their potency very fast."

"What if I can help?" Shilu'Vael spoke for the first time. Her voice was soft and very quiet. "No, sorry… what if we can help?"

"'We'?" her mother asked.

The youngest of the Quarians was noticeably intimidated by the attention that suddenly focused on her.

"It's… not just me here, but… it's two of us." Overpowered by embarrassment, she timidly tapped a few times on her omni-tool:

"People of the Compact, I beg for your patience," a voice spoke. It had a synthetic vibe to it, but a ring of deep concern as well. "Shilu is very scared of speaking before so many people. I am Agleia, the artificial intelligence that cares for her." Jaenna cringed upon hearing that, but did not interrupt.

The Citadel members of the Compact already had known of what had transpired with Shilu'Vael and about the measures Karin Chakwas and Mila Palukhina had resorted to to save her life, but they were not any less shocked by what they heard. "An AI is in control of an _organic body_?" Rix gasped.

"The only things I am in control of here are her prosthetics." The voice was now defensive — and to a point, stern. "I don't like you thinking I could somehow harm Shilu'Vael."

T'Perro turned angrily towards the Starwatch medical officers. "This is nothing short of an abomination. All she would have to do is withhold control—"

"And Shilu would die, and I would die as well." The voice became slightly biting: "Your priorities are lost on me, but passing away is not among mine."

"And as an AI, once you got to control other people's implants, you'd simply jump between them, wouldn't you?" A murmur of alarm rose from the Citadel people present.

But Agleia's voice now became tired. "We've had talks with Brulirea and Lumiscant. They have already warned us about how you would react. My primary concern is protecting Shilu'Vael. Putting your morbid fears at ease is not."

Garrus was outright scared by the situation, but he did not give in to angry fear like his superiors. "How could you help?"

"I am independently sentient," was the answer. "Actually, I rely on Shilu's biological processes for energy. Like Mercy, I can modify and change my own programming to better perform my functions, but one key aspect of my relationship with her is that she can override me at any time. I cannot be hacked. And given how closely we know each other, I have gained a measure of something almost every other AI lacks: ingenuity. I could, for instance, monitor hijacked Geth frames and forestall attempts at reasserting control because I can produce an impromptu response faster than a purely synthetic intelligence."

Rix was not persuaded. "This is the exact thing the Council fears," he postured. "An AI that is evolved enough to actually exert control over organic life."

Now Shilu herself spoke: "Agleia _never_ controls me. Why are you so afraid of the thing that is keeping me alive? She cannot do anything I don't let her do." She pointed at Shepard and Liara. "Are you going to trust Benezia's word then? The ship that brainwashed Saren is exactly what you say: an AI that can control organic life. It is out there, on the loose. What, am I a convenient scapegoat for your fear?"

"And there are two such ships here in our galaxy," Liara added quietly. "That one of them has compromised a fallen Spectre is terrible news already, but I'm more afraid for the one we haven't even heard about."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** asked questions and pointed out glaring errors. This chapter would have turned out a lot worse if they hadn't been around.

 **kishinokurobi** deserves a HUGE kudos for his support. Thank you!


	34. Citadel: Eye of the Dragon

Erinyes station

The door opened with a hiss. Liara was on the other side.

"Good… morning," Aaliyah muttered. A quick look at her left wrist: some scarce minutes past 3 AM. She blinked a few times to adjust her eyes, then noted the young Asari's face: "You okay?"

Liara shook her head. "No. Am I… bothering you?"

"No, no. Come in." A tap on the omni-tool built into her left arm, and the darkness of her cabin receded into a soft yellow-lit penumbra. She then opened the small fridge next to her bed: "Anything to drink…?" Shepard's voice trailed off as she noticed Liara's bright blush. She slept in the nude, and had not bothered putting anything on to welcome her visitor — and she had caught her at the exact moment she was ogling her. A half-smile crept on her lips, only further adding to the young Asari's awkwardness: "I see you're growing appreciative of human anatomy."

"Oh, I'm—I'm sorry, I… I couldn't help it." Clumsily she stammered, desperate to somehow change topics: "You, er, were asleep?"

Unexpectedly, the woman sighed. "No. I couldn't." She reached into the fridge. "Here." She tossed a bottle at Liara.

"What is this?"

"Orange juice. As close to freshly squeezed stuff as it gets." She sat back on her bed and took a sip. "Now spit it."

"Eh?"

Shepard shook her head briefly in frustration: "Tell me what's on your mind. And no, I didn't mean 'spit the juice'."

Liara smiled shyly, then sat next to her, gloom darkening her face. "It's about my… my mother. I talked to the doctors." She took a deep breath. "Ziegler said that there's signs of brain damage."

Aaliyah reached out to hold Liara's hand. "How bad?"

"She couldn't say exactly. She's asked for an outside expert's opinion. But, from what she understood… it's not good." The young Asari's eyes stared blankly downwards. "What is going to happen to my mother?"

Shepard rubbed her eyes with her free hand, trying to conceal her discomfiture. "For now, we'll keep her under guard. Her words are the best we have to go by. At least until we find the journals she spoke of." The next words jumped to her tongue, but she held herself back and only spoke them reluctantly: "Supposing it's not another clever disinformation ploy."

Liara only nodded, the awkwardness caused by Shepard's nudity now totally replaced by concern and grief. Despite herself, Aaliyah found it enthralling, and had to remember that this girl was not human, lived on an entirely different time scale, and being over a century old did not mean she was any less of an adolescent.

"You are more of a scientist than I am," she said, now feeling clumsy herself. "You probably are better equipped than me to guess at the cause."

Her Asari friend-colleague-lover shook her head slowly. "My knowledge of medicine is very-very limited. I've focused my studies on archaeology. I know a little about biotics-related disorders and illnesses we might develop during our lives, but not enough to tell if a disease is what damaged my mother's brain."

A hint of an idea hovered at the edges of Shepard's thoughts, and she struggled to break clean through the fogginess that clouded her mind. Her body was screaming for sleep, but it would not come, dreading as she was that at any moment a message alerting them of Saren's attacks would come. "I was thinking about how Saren employed a neuroscientist, this Rana Thanoptis we haven't yet found."

The interrogant implied by that idea managed to pull Liara a bit out of her gloom: "What I know about Saren… I don't think he would do that out of generosity."

Aaliyah stifled a yawn, trying to think. Another sip of juice did not help. "You're saying that he would have another use for her… but if your mother was already sick…" She tapped her omni-tool: "Mercy, try to pull Benezia's medical records, or put up a request with T'Perro or the Council itself on my behalf if you can't."

The AI's avatar had improved over the years. Now only tiny imperfections, very small wrinkles and spots on her skin, distinguished it from the face of Angela Ziegler. While owing the core of her personality to the late Overwatch legend, Mercy had evolved on her own, and added those small features to reflect it.

And she had thoroughly mastered human emotion, as evinced by how irresistibly endearing her frown was, motherly after a fashion. "You shouldn't be working this late, colonel."

"I know, I know, you're right," Aaliyah groaned. "Trying to tire myself out here. Can't sleep."

The frown softened, concern coloring it. "Alright, colonel. I'll try to fetch this for you. Get a hot bath if sleep doesn't come."

Shepard smiled. "Yes, doc. 'Night."

The platinum-blond face vanished. "She's so lifelike," Liara commented, equally entranced and troubled by what she had seen. "But then, considering who she takes after…"

Her human friend-colleague-love interest acknowledged that with a brief nod. She was taken back to the days before the First Contact War, when she had been told by the late Torbjörn of the story behind the AI and how it had come to be. "Honestly I think she doesn't get enough credit."

The Asari was still unsettled. "I don't know whether to be horrified or amazed."

Shepard needed a second to understand what she meant. She shrugged. "To me it's absolutely natural to deal like this with her, but I see your point. We have two wars and unbelievable amounts of dead behind us. It wasn't cheap getting here."

"I know. I took my time to learn about the Omnica Corporation and the chaos their creations unleashed. If any… if any Citadel member had had to deal with that kind of crisis, the Council would have stepped in immediately. Yet you solved it on your own." Liara took a deep breath. "At times I wonder if we're not holding ourselves back."

Aaliyah could have replied at length about how the relationship between AIs and humans was not all rosy, but she grinned and teased her humorously instead: "What happened to the shy blushing Liara that walked into my room? She ignores a naked girl and starts talking all serious?" Mockingly she frowned: "You know… maybe Astrid is right. Maybe I should spend less time in the firing range and more in front of a mirror."

Liara smiled at that, again turning a lively shade of cyan. She stole a glance at Shepard, but it was not enough to completely dispel her mood. "I'm too worried," she whispered softly. "When it happens… I haven't learned to let go of things. My mind tends to substitute one problem for another."

* * *

The news everyone was dreading arrived almost immediately after the alarm bell rang on Shepard's wrist. "Colonel, I hope you've managed to catch some rest," Mercy said warily in the manner of greeting.

"Why, it's going to be a busy day?" Aaliyah answered deadpan. "You know I didn't. And you know too that today I'm going to wish I didn't wake up."

"Rix and T'Perro are already in the conference room."

"I'll be there in four minutes. Wake up everyone." She killed the channel, and after brushing her teeth and putting on some simple training pants and tank top she walked out of her cabin.

"That was fast on your part," Rix said curtly as a welcome when she arrived at the hall.

"Fast? You were already here," was the tired reply. "How bad?"

T'Perro brought up a galaxy map on the hologram projector set in the middle of the table, then reclined herself back in her chair, her expression dour and empty. "We didn't hear a shred of a whisper. Nothing. They came out of the blue."

Shepard observed the map, her blood feeling colder and colder as she took in the news. If this was a diversion, it sure was a mighty and expansive one: Geth ships scaling up all the way from escorts to destroyers had clashed with Alliance or Council forces on ten different systems.

"Only one hit on a system we had considered: Therum," Genji noted.

"And they didn't even go for the mines where the ruins are," Amari pointed out as she read the after-action report.

"Any word from the Council?" Liara asked.

"Nothing yet," Rix answered. "But when they hear about it they'll panic."

Astrid checked the time of a dispatch. "Most likely everyone is being briefed right now. This isn't even an hour old."

"They'll howl for Quarian blood," Aaliyah mused, then looked up — only to see Zenyatta and her omnic engineers enter the room, followed by the Quarians. "Ah, there you are," she said to the women. "You're in for a shitstorm."

"We've been told," Jaenna'Gisal answered, then added reluctantly: "Your… AI forewarned us."

"I recall Zenyatta saying that your father is a member of the Admiralty Board," Shepard said by way of Tali. The girl nodded uneasily, seeing it coming: "You'd do well to send him a message. Tell him that he'd better have us to deal with rather than the Council or our Prime Minister. When this gets to the media they'll be under immense pressure to find a scapegoat."

Tali'Zorah was going to say that the Admiralty would not like being cornered, but she could not argue with Shepard's reasoning. "…Alright."

Garrus turned on his chair to face Zenyatta. "Out of all people here, you're the only one who's actually seen and talked to the Geth. What can you tell us about them?"

The omnic sage crossed his hands over his lap. "Those we spoke to claimed to have no interest in expanding beyond the worlds of their creators. As a matter of fact, what we got to see of Rannoch was pristine. The Geth preserved the planet as the Quarians left it, including the damage caused during the Morning War. We saw little in the way of war machines or military."

"It makes sense," Rix said mockingly. "They're all over here."

"I concede that it may sound exceptionally convenient, but the Geth here are not representative of those beyond the Perseus Veil," the omnic argued. "As I informed as we returned from our expedition, there has been a schism, with a number of them following Saren."

"Yes, it's very convenient," the Turian Spectre grumbled. "But why?"

"The way it was conveyed to us, the separatists regarded Saren as someone who could help them accomplish their goals," the omnic explained. "What the Geth pursue above all things is unity. As I said, we did not witness gatherings of hosts and fleets, but great stockpiles of materials and construction machinery instead. They aspire to build a giant structure around the Tikkun star — one to house every Geth there is."

Liara was amazed. "By the Goddess…"

"A Dyson Sphere?" Amari asked. Zenyatta nodded.

"Megastructures are pipe dreams," Danaan remarked. "The amount of mass required to construct a station that encapsulates a star is orders of magnitude larger than that available at any single one-star system. They'd have to strip down and ransack several to achieve that goal, down to the last asteroid."

"That mentality is what has held us back," T'Soni countered quietly. "There were initiatives to build mass relays of our own. We know the rough science behind them already. But they always were deemed 'too expensive and complicated endeavours'."

"We're also looking at this through our own lens," Shepard thought out loud. "What if the Geth have access to technologies that we don't? It's really beyond me, but I've heard some freaky stuff about using a star's very own mass as a source of building materials. My first impression was that it'd be too risky to fiddle with the gravity of a whole star system like that, but I'm no astrophysicist. I shoot things." _Instead of thinking,_ she almost added, stopping herself just in time. _I should do more of that. That's why Saren tricked me._

"But if they could…" Liara was, for lack of a better word, entranced with the idea. Whether by enthusiasm or horror, the rest could not say. "I don't think anyone here can wrap their heads about what that means. Myself included. A structure that big… if it could be made to support life, it would be large enough to house every thinking being in the galaxy. Who would actually _need_ planets?"

Genji raised a hand. "I hope you'll excuse me, doctor, but I believe that discussion exceeds us and our current worries." The young Asari bowed her head, acknowledging he was right. Aaliyah silently chastised herself, noticing how exhaustion had caused her to wander off topic instead of refocusing the conversation as she should have. "A question I believe we should be asking ourselves now is, why the schism? If they pursue unity, then a schism doesn't make any sense."

"Sovereign, through Saren, seeks to take possession of the Citadel," Zenyatta replied. "To this end, a military is required, and that was what was asked of the Geth. The schism originated over two major disagreements: antagonizing all major intelligent civilizations of the galaxy, and depending on technology that is not their own."

A brief, nonplussed silence followed. "This can't be right," Rix said forcefully. "Geth not wanting to 'antagonize' organic civilizations? After what they did to the Quarians? I don't believe you." The Quarians themselves, Shepard noticed, were very quiet.

"Hence not commenting it prior to this meeting," was the omnic's retort. "Outlandish as the facts appear to you, you would have rejected them on the spot."

Once again, Garrus was pragmatic. "Can the… loyalists, for lack of a better word, help?"

"Would you accept it, were they to offer it?" Zenyatta asked back. Silence answered him. "They thought as much."

Wrex, as usual, had waited until the initial impressions had been spoken before giving his opinion: "This sounds worse than it looks. If this tin can here says Sovereign wants to get the Citadel using the Geth, then if enough Geth supported the plan it would have happened already. Saren can't have that many of them following him around."

The Starwatch crew found the Krogan's way of referring to Zenyatta offensive, but neither the omnic nor his two attendants uttered a word. "It makes sense," Astrid accepted.

Mercy's avatar appeared over the hologram projector on the table: "I apologize for the interruption, but I just got a message from David Anderson," she announced. "He will be docking here shortly, but until then he'll take part of this meeting remotely."

"Thank you, Angela," the dark-skinned officer said next as he appeared in her place. "I bring word from the Prime Minister. Admiral Hackett persuaded him to handle our contacts with the Quarians through us. We are to convey our request for their cooperation in a forceful but polite manner."

"I can see where it is going," Jaenna'Gisal muttered. "The Geth are our responsibility, thereby it's in our best interests to cooperate with the galactic community, and whether we agree or refuse to render aid our response will not be forgotten."

"That's it, more or less," Anderson accepted. "You don't have much of a choice there. Whatever goodwill there is towards the Migrant Fleet will vanish if you refuse to assist efforts to repel the Geth."

"There isn't much of that to begin with," the older Quarian snapped back. "And what is it that the Alliance or the Council could offer in the near term? The Migrant Fleet is traversing space thousands of light years away from the nearest of their worlds or outposts."

"Jaenna—" Tali began to say, but T'Perro cut in:

"This is not a negotiation, mistress Gisal," the Asari Spectre reminded her coldly. "And bear in mind that, even if it was, we have more than enough political and diplomatic clout to muscle any of your neighbors on the Terminus worlds into allowing the strip mining operations you routinely perform to fund your economy. Operations, may I remind you, that happen for two reasons — because they can't oppose you and because we don't support them. If we were to back them up, you'd have to go to war for your resources."

"Stop it!" Tali'Zorah said forcefully, surprising everyone. "Jaenna'Gisal is an exile. She doesn't speak for the Migrant Fleet. Neither does Shilu'Vael here, and neither do I, but I have leverage on the Admiralty through my father. If I talk to him reasonably, I can get them not to rebuff requests from the Alliance or the Council."

"Well, that would one thing less to worry about," Anderson accepted. "I will transmit that to Hackett once we have official confirmation. With that settled, I think that what we should focus on next is on finding out what Saren was after when he deployed the Geth."

"With your permission, skipper," Shepard cut in, trying to focus her tired brain, "I think that merits clarification. We know that Saren is an expert at diversion and obfuscation. If this huge deployment we've seen is that, then instead of trying to figure out what the Geth were after, we should think about where is it that Saren does not want us to look."

Looks were exchanged across the table. Wrex smirked his toothy grin. "You're learning," he said approvingly.

T'Perro brought back the galactic map on the hologram projector. "These are the systems that were attacked," she said. "We have Geth forces on the ground on twelve different planets, five of them deployed in close proximity to population centers."

"They're spread pretty much at random," Garrus commented, thinking.

"Saren's goal, or actually Sovereign's, is to occupy the Citadel. Wrex here pointed out, correctly if you ask me, that the forces he has are insufficient for that. Either he would need a larger fleet, or he would need to create distractions dangerous enough to force us to withdraw military assets from the core worlds to deal with them," Liara thought out loud. "But this doesn't fit that pattern. If this is a diversion, then it's one deployed with another goal in mind."

"If we could persuade the Council, can we count upon the Alliance to provide military support?" Rix asked formally.

"Considering the aftermath of the Elysium incident, I can make a very solid case," Anderson answered. "But it's a political decision. Even if Hackett and the Chiefs of Staff presented a united front, it's a hard sell. Without knowledge of the facts, both the ruling coalition and the opposition parties would see it as a risky move with little immediate gain. And we can't disclose all of our intelligence to them. The chances of tipping off our enemy are too high."

The Spectres did not like that. Neither did Garrus nor Valena. "There would be consequences to the Council's stubbornness," Danaan reasoned. "We were warned."

"We will still be called upon to act. Sitting back and doing nothing while both our militaries fight the Geth is not going to help our cause," Vakarian mused.

"We are not frontline troops. We can perform in that capacity, but our talents will be mostly wasted", Genji reasoned. "Besides, no one said we will be doing nothing."

Shepard's omni-tool flashed. It was a message from Sombra's. The hacker, along with the Talon operatives, had not been allowed to attend, mostly to avoid a clash because of the casualties sustained by the Turians on Iera, but Aaliyah had seen no reason not to give them a live feed of the meeting. She quickly digested the message and the charts attached, and raised her hand. "If I may, I think I have something here," she announced. "An agent of mine ran an analysis of the deployments the Alliance and the Citadel executed to contain the Geth. Taking into account the sectors assets were taken off from and the distances and response times involved, she has identified three likely places where Saren might have wanted a reduced presence: Eden Prime, Feros, and Tuchanka."

The last word elicited an immediate response on part of the Spectres: "Tuchanka?" T'Perro repeated in alarm.

"Why? What could he want there?" Astrid asked.

"The answer's simple enough," Rix answered curtly. "To rally the Krogan to his cause."

All the eyes focused on Wrex. The gnarly old Urdnot stared back relentlessly. "Surprised? We've been humiliated and nearly annihilated after the Salarians tossed their little science experiment our way. All the clans in Tuchanka would jump at the chance to get some payback."

"So what should we have done?" T'Perro shot back. "Go on, enlighten us. What could we have done instead? You encroached in our worlds, occupied colonies that didn't belong to you, hurled rocks straight into cities, massacred civilians just to 'drive the point home'. What other solution was there? You aren't going to say we should have just exterminated your kind, are you?"

The Starwatch members looked on, aware that this was a chance for Wrex to vent off his anger on the Council for the miseries of his people, but his answer was cool: "I know. We brought this upon ourselves. But it's a lesson my people never fully learned. They can't move on. They're stuck in 'the glories we've had' and only yearn for restitution and vengeance. Everything they want. So they'll jump at the opportunity."

After a brief silence, Valena noted: "You keep saying 'they', not 'we'."

The old Krogan appeared older still. "Not long ago we had some food on the mess hall here. I told you then what I think of how things are back home. People there don't work. They fight. That's all they do. We've gone all the way back to living in tribes, hunting for food when we must, poaching on each other's contracts and lands if we can. For centuries I've said that we have to focus on retaking the only thing we really own instead of daydreaming, but no one likes hard work. My own father betrayed me, cast me out, and killed or exiled the few that supported me. And that was two hundred years ago." He stared at the abrasive Shilyna. "You know what? At times I wish you had done almost exactly that: kill almost everyone else off. They won't move on."

Mercy's avatar reappeared on the hologram projector: "Colonel Anderson is docking. Please excuse me for daring to make the suggestion, but I believe you should meet him on the docks," she said, an enigmatic hint of a smile on her lips.

The Compact members exchanged puzzled looks. Rix was going to object on the grounds that the meeting was too important to interrupt for the sake of a single member arriving late, but however much he loathed AIs, he knew Mercy enough already to realize she would not make suggestions lightly. "Alright. We can call for a recess and continue later."

The agents gathered there streamed out of the hall and made their way through the corridors of their asteroid base. In the way, to further confusion, they were joined by the Talon crew —who were met with cool glares by the Citadel people, but given a polite if distant welcome by their Starwatch counterparts—, the medical crew, Jacqueline Nought, and Tracer. Oxton in particular was unusually perked up, and her colleagues noticed it: "What is this all about?" Amari interrogated her.

"Oh, you'll see soon enough." The Overwatch legend continued walking next to her, but it was immediately obvious that she was struggling to keep her enthusiasm under control. There was a spring in her step no one among her acquaintances —not Reyes, not Lacroix, not Genji himself— had seen on her for a very, very long time.

When they arrived on the docks, there was an honor guard formed up, both Alliance and Citadel soldiers intermixed. David Anderson, Gavius Surrakar and Admiral Steven Hackett stood at attention. Behind them, beyond the windows that looked out into space, was moored a brand-new ship, unlike anything they had ever seen.

"Members of the Compact, we apologize for keeping this from you," Hackett said stiffly. "Now that you are formally recognized agents operating on behalf of both the Alliance and the Citadel against a common enemy, we believe it's past time you were outfitted with a vessel worthy of you and capable of the performance your unique duties demand."

Surrakar gestured behind him. "May we introduce to you the _Redoubtable,_ " he announced. "Admiral Hackett and I worked for months behind the scenes to build her. May she be the first of her class, and serve both our peoples well."

* * *

The _Redoubtable_

The ship was, of course, a marvel to behold — but what almost drove Shepard to tears right then and there was to hear the voice that welcomed her: "Hello again, colonel. It's a pleasure to see you."

"Stella!" Tracer exclaimed in surprise, a huge grin on her face. "I thought you had gone down with the _Thermopylae_!"

A screen near the airlock depicted the AI's avatar. Unlike Mercy, she had opted for burgundy hair; her overall appearance was strikingly similar to Miranda's. The face frowned. "That was a most uncomfortable experience. But David thought of no one better to look after your ship. So he had my core salvaged and installed here."

Lena beamed at Anderson. "You just scored major points with me, David."

The black-skinned officer half-smiled. "Good. I hope it compensates for what comes next." He gestured left.

Tracer frowned, then looked that way. Her face hardened: "Oh no you didn't."

Anderson shook his head apologetically. A voice called out from the flight deck to their left, punctuating every word. A male voice. "Oh. Yes. He. Did." A chair swiveled around. The man sitting there sported a light beard, wore a golf cap, and looked at Lena. Sarcasm, irony and irreverence seemed to be permanent parts of his features. "Well hello there, darling," he said with a faux British accent. "You and I are going to get to know each other quite thoroughly."

"Oxton, meet flight officer Jeff Moreau," Anderson introduced the pilot. "He will be the other permanent pilot aboard."

Tracer did not comment. Instead, she and the newcomer dueled in silence, staring into each other's eyes. At last she smirked. "Sure, why not? It will be nice to have someone to tend to the steering wheel if I end up passing out sometime."

Moreau snorted. He did not seem intimidated by Tracer in the least. "Tall words for a museum piece. Don't get too full of yourself, lass. You move too quickly, and you'll miss much," he quipped, maliciously quoting Zenyatta.

Lena did not rise to the bait. She instead turned on her heel and followed after the rest of the Compact crew with a parting shot: "I like you, Moreau. It'll be a shame to see you burn."

"Sure, you tell yourself that," the man snarked back.

Shepard had observed the exchange with a slow smile. Anderson had apparently chosen the pilot with great care. If there was something that could do Lena some good, that something was having a rival — someone to keep her on her toes. _If he's got the chops to challenge Tracer, he has to be astonishingly good._

As they moved on to begin their tour of the ship, Amari asked Anderson: "Where did you find him?"

Hackett answered instead. He had a rare smile on his face. "Actually, he found us. As part of our agreement with Gavius, a Turian had to sit on that cockpit. Moreau would have none of it. When the ship was ready for her maiden flight, he stole it — and ran circles around the people we sent after him. Then he came back and surrendered the ship, saying he'd gladly go to prison if we found someone better than him for the pilot seat."

Tracer blinked. "He has a solid pair there."

The admiral shook his head slowly, still grinning. "He has guts, skill, and no patience for nonsense. Hard to pass by such a candidate to the seat. Even if that means he gets to challenge you, of all people."

Garrus found himself nodding in admiration. "I surmise you had to relent, sir," he told Surrakar.

The Spectre did not break stride. "He overcame those I selected for the post," he answered magnanimously. "I've never been one to let rules get in the way of doing things efficiently."

* * *

The inspection of the _Redoubtable_ only highlighted how the same loving care that Shepard had observed from Anderson's choice of pilot had been paid to the entire ship. It was not only impressively looking, she would strike fear into the heart of whatever it faced in battle and turn colleagues green with envy on top of it. A set of monstrous heat sinks to allow for stealth cruising, a cavernous hangar stuffed with a Montauk dropship, drone strike craft, Bulwarks and hardsuits, an impressive array of point defense lasers, twin shield generators and a particle barrier engine — Hackett and Surrakar had spared no expense.

"What about firepower?" Garrus asked.

"You'll like it," Surrakar promised. "The usual assortment of missiles and torpedoes, plus twin batteries of the latest model of ferrofluid cannons the Alliance uses. They will tear big holes into anything they hit."

Vakarian nodded. "I've always wanted to see those things up close."

"They are power hogs," Amari observed. "What kind of power plant is installed here?"

"The latest in experimental technology derived from the Mars archives," Anderson answered. "It's not my field, don't expect a white paper from me. I'll just tell you what I managed to understand — Hawking radiation, encapsulated singularities… they use the entire output of a Tokamak reactor and mass effect fields to play with the mass of a black hole. It's a 'zero-point device' or something like that."

Tracer's eyes almost popped out: "No way they got that to work!"

"Well, the _Redoubtable_ moves and sails like a dream, so definitely they got something right here." He shook his head once. "Don't take my word for it, most likely I've gotten something wrong somewhere. Ask the people down in engineering for specifics. The whole thing is called a… a Deorain plant, I think."

Reyes froze. "Say that again."

Shepard arched her eyebrows: "A 'Deorain plant'?"

Lacroix spoke next: "That name is very important to Gabriel _._ I won't say any further."

Both Amari and Oxton looked at their old enemy. He was clearly interested, but kept it to himself under the scrutiny.

Tracer would have none of it. "If there is something we should know, out with it."

The former Blackwatch commander did not budge. "It's from my past. Nothing that should be relevant now." After a pause, he added reluctantly: "Probably I'm wrong. The woman with that name was a nanotechnology and genetics expert. Physics is a totally different field."

All of Starwatch was looking at Reyes now.

"That's not good enough."

Gabriel stared into Shepard's eyes. "I… give you my word," he said with difficulty. "It's not something that should become a problem, but if it does, you will know. I promise."

What surprised Aaliyah was that, for the first time ever since his capture at Iera, the assassin seemed to want his reluctant colleagues to trust him, when in the past he had just uttered whatever he wanted and not given a damn if those hearing it did not like it.

"We'll hold you to that," Amari grudgingly agreed.

* * *

 _Author's note:_ **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** again get kudos for their help, one for the advice on how to write convincingly -well, convincingly enough for me, at any rate :P - about the zero-point reactor, and the other for helping inspire the segment between Shep and Liara.


	35. Citadel: Operation Brass Eclipse (I)

The _Redoubtable_

According to the clocks, it was the small hours of the morning when Shepard woke up. As it had been before the news of the Geth attacks had reached them, sleep had failed to find her, but for other reasons this time. The Compact had discussed their next mission, and she had largely made the choice all by herself. She was hoping she had been right.

"Sombra identified three likely targets for Saren: Eden Prime, Feros and Tuchanka. Now, what could be of interest there for him?" Shepard had asked out loud. "As miss Lawson pointed out, I believe Eden Prime would be attractive for its shock value. Threatening the large civilian population there would keep us on our toes."

"And we know very little so far about the Prothean ruins there," Liara had added. "Saren could target them if he knew something about them that we don't."

"Reason for which I've given instructions to demolish the site if he approaches," Hackett had announced. "There are standing orders to evacuate the surrounding environs and detonate a low-yield fusion bomb if there is an attack on the place. If we cannot have it, then Saren won't either. Whatever he wants, he's not getting it."

The young T'Soni had paled: "But that would be—!"

Astrid had interrupted her as neutrally as she could: "A bit extreme, sir, if you ask me, but understandable."

"Let's move on, then. Tuchanka?" Shepard had eyed the Citadel personnel. "Considering all the assets you have in place, I think Saren's objective there has already been achieved."

"What are you talking about?" T'Perro had asked sharply.

"He knows that hinting about a threat of the Krogan following him en masse will have the Council in a fit. It's the perfect distraction."

"To do what… if only we knew," Garrus had mused.

"That leaves the last target: Feros. We have no idea at all about what could Saren want there." A pause for effect before she had decided: "So we're going there."

Looks had been exchanged as people sought arguments to question her.

"How reliable is this Sombra?" Surrakar had asked. "What if she's mistaken?"

"Then we fuck up," had been Shepard's crude reply. "Look, I see your point. She worked for the terrorist faction responsible for the Second Omnic Crisis, but we never heard a whisper about her. And honestly we don't know what her agenda is. But she's responsible for every breakthrough we've had: she warned us about the raid on Iera—" a glance at Rix "—and revealed to us the whereabouts of Jacqueline Nought—and as you know, trying to arrest Benezia without her help would have been a disaster. A real one," she added as she gazed at T'Perro. "If she's done that to set us up for a trap… well, it could be that, I agree it's a possibility. But I think it unlikely." She had not added that they were pressed for time, that each minute spent debating their course of action was a minute gained by Saren.

 _We need to appoint a field commander,_ Shepard realized as she reflected in the darkness, eyes wide open, sleep again eluding her, the soft whirring of the ship's machinery not relaxing her as it usually did. _We cannot waste time arguing about what to do next._

"Stella," she whispered tiredly, "anyone up?"

"Nought is undergoing a rehabilitation session with Ziegler," the AI answered. "Lawson and Shimada are sparring on the hangar. The Quarians are working on the reactor spaces." After a brief pause, she added: "The former Talon agents are on the mess hall."

Aaliyah blinked a few times to clear her eyes. "All three of them?"

"Yes, colonel."

She sat up on her bed. "Not the best company, but… I'd rather check on them."

"You want a live feed, colonel?"

She shook her head. "There's some things you have to see yourself, Stella. Besides… I don't put it past Sombra to hack your cameras."

The screen on her desk turned on. The AI's avatar was on it. She looked miffed. "I find it disappointing that you have such little faith in my capabilities."

Again Aaliyah shook her head. "It's not your abilities that I don't trust. It's hers that I fear."

She put on a simple, plain navy blue marine uniform, and left her quarters. The mess hall was sited on the deck above the hangar, and had a long window looking out into space. It was by this window that she found Lacroix, Reyes and Sombra, all sitting by a table. Glasses and a bottle, still unopened, were set on it.

The moment they noticed her, they all stood up at attention. She was slightly taken aback at that. "At… ease," she said haltingly, surprised. "Anything I should know?"

Lacroix sat back on her chair. "I'm remembering."

Shepard stared at the sniper. The woman looked back but added nothing.

"She's mourning her husband", Sombra clarified eventually. Her voice was slightly off, as if her mind was somewhere else. She had an empty look to her face as her eyes stared sightlessly into space.

The Starwatch colonel understood — both that the hacker was analyzing something in her mind, and what motivated Amélie's gloom. "How many years ago today?"

"Fifty-five", was Reyes' curt answer. He did not look her way either.

Shepard did not need to think much to remember the chilling tale of Gérard's death. Others would adamantly claim that the only place for such a ruthless murderess was inside a cell, but she could see that Amélie was already in one that went with her, and the burden of her guilt did not grow any lighter with time.

Aaliyah was forced to examine her feelings. The assassin that had gutted her squads on the Moon all those years back was sitting two steps away. Another assassin, one partly responsible for the downfall of Overwatch and the advent of the Second Omnic Crisis, also sat close by, and for all her vaunted coldness it was evident that she was grief-stricken. And, finally, a hacker she knew uncomfortably little about was obviously engaged into the shenanigans she was so superbly skilled at.

For the brown-skinned slicer she could not find any empathy, now that she had recovered from the blow to her ego that had represented being fooled by Saren.

But she felt moved to try and ease some of Amélie's pain.

"I won't insult you by pretending to know how you feel," she started. She was aware that if someone said to her what was on her mind it would hurt like hell, so she stumbled slightly: "I haven't even gotten anywhere near to—to what you were forced to do. Also I… I know you were frozen until very recently, so the pain… I don't know if I could bear it."

Widowmaker did not react. "I don't need your sympathy."

"Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you don't need mine, but you need someone's." She tried to grab the attention of those pitiless yellow eyes. "I didn't know Gérard. But he would hope that you found a way to make amends."

There were flickers of anger and pain on Amélie's face. "You don't _simply move on_ after you kill your own spouse," was the icy reply.

"Okay, fine. What you were forced to do was monstrous. Happy now?" There was no answer, but the anger on the yellow eyes intensified. "But you did nothing to deserve your kidnapping, or being butchered at Talon's hands, or being turned into an assassin. I won't say a _remorseless_ assassin. It's plain obvious that guilt is eating you alive."

Reyes was observing. A glimmer of curiosity colored his grim features. "I'm surprised that you care."

She turned to face him. "Me too, really," she admitted. "I'm surprised myself that I'm talking to you like this."

Understanding flashed briefly on Gabriel's mind. "When we had that one-on-one talk, back on that cell, I told you that what I wanted was some recognition for me and my men," he recollected. "I didn't expect it from you… especially because of what I did to you. But you went that extra mile anyway for us." The question came out after a few instants: "Why?"

The ghosts of Ricks, Akemi, Krauze and the others stared back at her as she tried to frame her answer.

"Because you regret it."

'It' could mean a lot of things, and it actually did, but neither Aaliyah nor Gabriel needed to clarify that.

Something cracked in Reyes. He did not make any overt gesture, but they both felt it.

"Yeah." The following words came out with difficulty: "I… owe you."

They looked into each other's eyes. "It's not me whom you have to make amends with," she said slowly and deliberately. _I don't want your restitution anymore. I want your loyalty._

The assassin read her face and understood. He wanted to say a lot of things, but everything that came to his mind was trite, melodramatic or insufficient.

"So that's why you want to help her?" He gestured at Lacroix, who had witnessed the exchange with not a shred of emotion. "Because she regrets it?"

Her eyes turned towards the sniper. "No punishment could be worse than her own torment." She took a deep breath. "I… I wasn't there to see for myself the consequences of what she did. Maybe that colors my opinions a little. But if I had to bear a guilt that monstrous… hell, I couldn't. I know for sure that Gérard himself couldn't bear to see her like this either."

Sombra seemed to come out of her reverie then—or maybe she never had been really away either. "Who could have imagined you were that good at playing shrink?" she said mockingly with an irreverent grin.

Shepard sat on the table along with the rest of the Talon crew. "There's more to being a commander than giving orders."

Gabriel perked up slightly upon hearing those words. He silently nodded his agreement and watched as the Starwatch colonel poured drinks.

"To Gérard Lacroix", she toasted. "And to his wife, may she find peace."

Now it was Amélie's time to crack. She came out of her statue-like stillness to reach for the glass.

Her voice quivered as she softly spoke the word:

" _Merci._ "

* * *

"I received a message from T'Perro," Stella informed seven hours later as they approached Feros. "She searched a safe haven of Benezia's on Thessia. Her journals were found and are being decoded. She expects to have news shortly."

Garrus clenched his fist. "Finally, a good one for us. Hopefully Saren doesn't know about either the place or the journal."

Shepard was not so sure. "Let's hope you're right."

"You think this is another trick."

The Starwatch colonel scowled. "I've gotten my fingers burned already."

The Turian eyed her oddly, then glanced at her hands. "I don't see anyth—oh, it's another of those colorful expressions." He bowed his head. "I can't blame you."

The cockpit felt cool. Moreau and Oxton had traded barbs on their first meeting, but that incipient rivalry was set aside when it was time to get down to work. Tracer sat on the left seat, and her partner occupied the right one.

"Zhu's Hope tower, this is the _Redoubtable,_ operated on behalf of the Alliance-Citadel joint task force," Moreau spoke on his mike. "We are on approach and can't see the status of your docking bays. Please advise, over."

Seconds ticked by without a response. Both pilots exchanged glances; Tracer needed no word to query their sensor suite for nearby contacts. Again she looked at her colleague, this time shaking her head.

"Remember what happened the last time we got no answer?" Astrid asked with a slight edge.

"Yeah, a sentient genocidal dreadnought came around to say hello," was Shepard's dry answer. "Now shut up. Don't tempt fate."

"Zhu's Hope tower…" Moreau repeated his call. Another few seconds waiting, then he shook his head. "They're not answering."

Aaliyah needed only a superficial glance to see that Oxton was already clad on the lightweight power armor the Starwatch workshop had put together with her unique needs and abilities in mind, her trusty machine pistols on twin holsters. "The team on the Montauk, now. That also means you, Tracer. Jeff, you got the wheel."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Lena stood up. "Just try and do get us close enough in one piece, will you please?"

"Oh, count on it. Expect a few bumps along the way, though. And maybe a few panels will need a new paint job, too."

"That'll come out of your paycheck, Moreau," Shepard quipped, just seriously enough. She did not want to interfere too much. His rivalry with Tracer added some levity that was much welcome at that moment.

"Can I keep my bunk and chair, ma'am? You know, after they evict my ass."

"You hope to keep them, make sure Tracer doesn't kick you to the curb."

"Some vote of confidence," the pilot snarked, then turned his attention back to his instrument panel.

They arrived at the hangar in time to see their crew boarding the dropship. Lumiscant the omnic engineer handed her her loadout: a Locust submachine gun, a hardlight caster to supplement the one built into her left palm, and a satchel loaded with grenades and bubble shield projectors. She accepted it with a bow of her head and boarded the Montauk herself.

"Commanders on deck!" Layali Amari barked. The professional soldiers snapped salutes. The rest, including Sombra, Liara and the Quarians, raised their hands in greeting instead.

"At ease," she acknowledged them. "We have been trying to raise the local settlement. They aren't answering. So we're going in expecting the worst. Amari, we're dropping you ahead of us, but no feet on the ground yet. If there's Geth around, we have to tread lightly or we'll alert them all—hell, they'll hear us coming outright so I don't think there's surprising them." A hand shot up: "Yes, Park?"

"The Geth are all networked, is that correct?" The Quarians all nodded as one. "If I remember right, that means they have total awareness, isn't that right? Once one spots us, they'll all know where we are. If they concentrate firepower they can overwhelm us very easily."

Shepard looked at Shilu'Vael. "Well?"

The Quarian cyborg —just calling her a 'cyborg' felt blasphemous already— spoke up reluctantly: "Geth are not distinct entities, they are not individually sentient. They are a case of emergent intelligence: complex behaviors emerging from sets of simpler rules. The softwares that comprise them synergize to respond to directives and stimuli. That would usually make them extremely hard to hack or subvert by digital methods."

"You say 'usually'", Valena noted, "so what's changed this time?"

Tali'Zorah answered instead. "Occasionally we put together attack software that can throw Geth for a loop—I think the word would be 'viruses' or 'worms'. But they are very short lived. Geth are almost amorphous right now, they're evolving very quickly; as Jaenna pointed out, they can counteract them very fast. But Shilu and-and Agleia working together can continuously tailor and tweak their attacks so that the Geth cannot develop a response quickly enough."

"So we are on a first-name basis now?" Anika jabbed amicably.

"We don't have much of a choice," Jaenna grumbled. "We like it or not, Agleia is part of Shilu forever now. She's keeping her alive. Might as well try and get along with her."

"That's very much appreciated," the AI said through Shilu's omni-tool, then she added deadpan: "With a bit of hope we may even get to exchange presents on the holidays."

A few snickers punctuated Agleia's snark. "You just stick to your job," was the older Quarian's dry reply.

"Well, anything you can do could help. Field reports say that most Geth combat platforms are about as perceptive as front-line soldiers." Shepard turned on a screen and showed a few pictures in quick succession.

"They look like walking lamp posts," Park observed.

"'Lampheads', that's how our troops dubbed them," Astrid pointed out. "Whatever that thing is for, it doesn't stop them from being effective. They maneuver, lay suppressing fire, deploy in fire teams, call in support, flank, snipe, and do most things well-trained combatants do. And they're ridiculously accurate to boot."

"Anything about their guns that I haven't read already?" Layali asked.

"Their weapons are about as good as those from the Haliat armories," Garrus answered. "Linear accelerator rifles, plasma shotguns, lasers. By themselves they're dangerous enough already, but as Martinsson said, they're very sharp shots."

The cool Lacroix asked a question of the Quarians: "Can you interfere with that?"

Uneasily, Tali replied: "We can't guarantee that. Each try yields different results."

"Then let me help, _chica,_ " Sombra cut in. She got apprehensive looks in response.

"This is very specific tech," Tali'Zorah tried to object. "We would have to brief you extensively on this—"

"So get started now." Reyes had used the deep, almost frightful voice that had characterized him while he had embodied his Reaper persona. "These tin cans seem better coordinated and communicated than what we could ever be, _and_ they are dead shots. We get down there unprepared, it's going to get ugly."

No one tried to question Gabriel. Genji, Lena, and even Layali stood in silent support. Cornered, the Quarians shot one last glance at Shepard and Vakarian, who as commanders would have the last word.

"You heard the man," Garrus said simply.

* * *

"Vulture one-dash-one, this is the _Redoubtable,_ " they heard Moreau speak over the radio. "You're cleared for launch. Good luck out there."

" _Redoubtable,_ this is Vulture flight," Tracer replied. "Thank you. Stay sharp."

The distant Theseus star shone one last time behind Feros as Lena dove towards the surface, drone fighters in escort. This side of the planet was blanketed in darkness, with not a single artificial light in view.

"Such situations remind me just how far away from home I am," Shimada said quietly.

"Certainly Hanamura is a ways off," Tracer commented from the cockpit.

The mention of his birthplace caused the ninja to grow only more solemn: "I don't belong there anymore."

 _A lot of people here don't belong anywhere anymore,_ Shepard thought as her eyes shifted between faces. Not Liara, not Shilu, not Jaenna, not Wrex, not Valena, not Miranda, not Jacqueline, not Genji, not Lena… not Lacroix, not Sombra, not Reyes.

 _Except here, maybe?_

"You belong with us," Aaliyah told Genji.

The ride became jittery as the dropship initiated its descent. The air was clear of clouds, but thick and heavy with a sooty and dusty haze. As they approached the surface, the towers jutting out from the wreckage that blanketed the planet became more prominent and noticeable under the pale light of the two Ferosian moons.

"Wow, look at those towers…" Astrid breathed.

"They didn't seem as impressive on the pictures," Genji observed.

"Building these skyways can't have been easy… not even for Protheans," Anika commented.

"At the apex of their power, the Protheans had built across Feros so extensively that over two-thirds of its surface were covered by a giant city," Liara detailed.

"Then the Reapers came," Shepard added quietly.

"Before it was a part of your territory, this was a popular place with looters and scavengers," the young Asari archaeologist continued, if anything to try and shake off the dread of Aaliyah's comment. "The rubble is between ten to fifteen meters deep, thickening to over thirty in a few places. Lots of chambers and structures are thought to remain untouched beneath the debris."

"Yes," Anika acknowledged her. "There's a very strict policy regarding looting, especially since Vishkar was granted a settlement and exploration contract."

"Vishkar?" Reyes asked with a sliver of interest. "Who's in charge here?"

"An old friend of my mom's," Ziegler answered.

One of the Prothean towers, after having been extensively evaluated and tested for integrity, had been selected as the place for the outpost. Tracer held station a kilometer away, while the drone fighters and the airborne Amari circled twice around it, cautiously looking for signs of ambushers. For this one mission, the jumpjet trooper had ditched part of her arsenal in favor of additional shield generators and an active point defense system not unlike that of a hardsuit, reasoning that she would need them if the enemy boasted superior accuracy.

"No hostiles on the LZ," she informed at last. "I have a visual on the docking bays. I see only one ship docked, a freighter. The other two are empty."

Garrus was unconvinced and thoughtful. "Something isn't right here. If I held that colony and wanted to defend it against newcomers, I'd make sure to give them a proper welcome. And I refuse to believe they don't know we're here."

"Maybe our air cover scared them off," Astrid guessed. "Half a dozen drone fighters is no small thing. And considering that Tracer and our omnic girls are on the controls…"

"Still, he has a point," Shepard recognized. "I don't like it, but we have to go. Let's get in there."

The bays themselves were not the crisp, clean facilities of a starport. Instead, it was a cavernous hall on the side of the tower that had been cleared to make room for the docking braces, cranes and walkways necessary to service landing ships. The walls were naked masonry, pitted and worn by thousands of years of exposure to the elements.

"It's amazing that these towers still stand," Liara breathed.

"Let's just hope they hold together when the explosions start," Aaliyah said dryly. "Mercy, deploy a Bulwark to secure the docks. The other one is coming with us. You got the wheel until we come back."

"Yes, Shepard."

"Tali? Shilu? Jaenna?"

Tali'Zorah was looking intently at the readouts on her omni-tool. "There are Geth signals all over this place," she said warily. "I guess we know why nobody was answering our hails."

"It will take a few minutes, but I can pinpoint their locations in our map," Shilu'Vael offered.

"That would help. Park, you got point. Let's go."

The hallways leading out of the docks and into the main tower structure were spacious enough for three hardsuits to march side by side. Reyes, Oxton and Shimada scouted ahead of the rest, and as they exited the passageways into the main settlement square proper they came upon the first Geth:

"I see movement… lampheads, foot soldiers, six of them, plus two heavies and a four-legged walker," Tracer informed quietly.

"Any civilians in sight, over."

"None. No bodies, either. But we're late to the show, luv." Clearly, a battle had been fought there. Scorch marks, bullet holes and wrecked vehicles and omnic frames littered the place.

"Another group approaching from an exit to the north," Shimada whispered. "Half a dozen troopers plus another walker."

"They're fortifying the square," Garrus observed. "We let any more of them in, it's going to cost us."

Shepard tapped her omni-tool to bring up a schematic of the area. The Geth already on the square were hunkered down near the western exit, about two hundred meters from the entrance to their tunnel, the hulk of the enormous quadrupedal walker looming over its lesser brethren.

Lawson approached her. "Too large for an Armature," she dictamined. "A Colossus."

"A primary target for our Bulwark," Astrid thought.

"That's going to leave an awful lot of troopers to deal with," Garrus objected. "The moment we shoot at the big one, they'll scatter and dig in. We won't have a better opportunity."

"And that walker can't take cover," Shepard decided, sounding more confident than she felt. "Valena, Miranda and Jacqueline, I want you on defense duty. Liara, you too. That thing is going to pound us while our Bulwark reloads."

There was movement by the Geth strongpoint as the foot soldiers milled about, deploying some contraptions on the open street and powering them up. Hexagonal barriers popped into existence, then the walker started advancing.

"You've been spotted," Reyes alerted grimly.

"Engage!" Aaliyah ordered automatically.

The Bulwark loosed a single shot. The anti-personnel ordnance was a combination of high explosive and incendiary compounds, mixed right before firing with a package of molten metal that scythed mercilessly through body armor and soft matter alike. The Geth were no sturdier than omnics, and Bulwark weapons had been designed for effectiveness against heavy armor, organics and synthetics alike. As a result, when the round went off in the middle of the clustered troopers, the few not reduced to bits were blown away half-ablaze.

But to the Colossus that shower of blazing shrapnel was not even worthy of noticing. The enemies firing at his fellows, though, were. The weapon port on its forehead glowed fiercely before spitting a toroid of plasma at them, twin chainguns mounted on its chest spinning up as well. Liara, Valena and Miranda raised barriers to intercept the shot, but Jacqueline instead tried to deflect it — and was surprised by how difficult it was to affect the blazing toroid by means of biotics. The attack exploded against the multilayered defense, knocking almost everyone prone:

"Liara!" Ziegler screamed, then she warned: "Both T'Soni and Lawson are incapacitated!"

There was another shockwave in their midst as Jacqueline erupted in blue fire, now surrounded by a bubble of light so bright it hurt the eyes, and let out a guttural, enraged cry as she charged forward:

"Nought, don't!" Shepard bellowed, even though she knew it was a futile gesture. "Cover her, cover her!"

The Colossus took note of this singly approaching enemy and opened up with its chainguns, but it was clearly not enough to stop her, and the Geth learned of this fact too late to do anything about it. The berserk Jacqueline slammed her right fist dead center on the robot's chest—or, more properly, _into_ the robot's chest. There was a lightning pulse as, an instant later, the hulking automaton exploded into bits.

The approaching element of six troopers and another Colossus sped forward to eliminate this threat; the foot soldiers laid down a thick curtain of suppressive fire, pinning down Nought and forcing her to take cover among the wreckage of the automaton she had just destroyed, while the other towering four-legged mech moved into position for a clear shot. It was then when the assault element of the Compact sprang into action, with Valena dashing forward to shield Jacqueline, and Oxton and Reyes showing themselves to draw enemy fire while Shimada seized the distraction to get up close, quickly dispatch half the troopers, and stick a pulse bomb on the side of the Colossus. The resulting detonation tore off layers of armor and forced it to retreat.

"Move in! Secure the square!" Shepard ordered, then ran forward to join Jacqueline and Valena and threw up a bubble shield around them. "How is she?" she asked of the Asari commando.

"A bit winded, but otherwise unscathed."

"Reckless thing to do," she muttered through gritted teeth. "Impressive, but reckless."

Jacqueline scowled and almost told Shepard where she could stick it, but got ahold of herself and thought better of it. "Saw red for a moment. Sorry."

Aaliyah took a moment to evaluate her position. To their left, the street turned west, yawning into a hallway that led to the administrative section. A prefabricated building to her right concealed them from the retreating Colossus. Behind them she heard the pounding steps of the Bulwark as it hastened towards their position. Somewhere to her east echoed the chainguns of Park's hardsuit, no doubt supporting Oxton, Reyes and Shimada as they harassed the retreating enemy.

Astrid and Wrex took position by the wall before the threshold to the western passage. "I guess I should call someone else 'Doomfist' now," Martinsson said deadpan.

"Be my guest," Shepard replied curtly. "How are Liara and Miranda?"

"Stunned. Biotic backlash," Ziegler informed.

"Lampheads to the west!" Wrex bellowed in warning. His alert was punctuated by sniper fire: Vakarian and Widowmaker had perched atop the building facing the hallway and were using the vantage point to keep the Geth at bay.

"Don't stay there for long," Shepard warned, just as return fire started peppering her bubble. At once she deployed her squadshield to protect Valena and Jacqueline. The Bulwark shifted into its sentry configuration and unleashed a hailstorm of tracers, forcing the approaching troopers to stay in cover.

"They're pulling back," Shilu'Vael reported. "They are retreating."

"What?" Astrid looked back in surprise. "Oh. That means… holding this place is secondary for them."

"But just cede the ground to us?" Garrus thought out loud. "And a port where we can receive reinforcements?"

Wrex lowered his rifle, but still kept his eyes on the hallway. "They have other concerns. They may have taken the colony by surprise and kept the attack a secret, but now that there are regular troops here they don't gain anything by holding this place. Whatever they came here to do, it wasn't slaughtering everyone."

"Come to think of it," the arriving Shimada pondered, Oxton and Reyes in tow and the bulk of Park's hardsuit behind them, "where are all the people?"

"Most likely holed up on the company quarters," Shepard guessed. "Let's try to reach them out now, if they don't contact us first now that the Geth are retreating."

The latter happened indeed a few seconds later: "Incoming troops, this is chief officer Satya Vaswani, representing the interests of Vishkar Corporation here in Feros," a commanding female voice spoke on the radio. "You have our gratitude for driving out the Geth invaders. On whose authority are you here?"

Oxton smiled tiredly. "Symmetra. It's been ages."

The hologram projector in Tracer's omni-tool fired up to draw the three-dimensional visage of a woman. She was raven-haired, her brown skin smooth and unblemished. "As expected. You haven't aged one day."

"You're the picture of youth yourself. How much of it is synthetic?"

It was an impolite question, almost rude, but Vaswani simply replied, "All of it." She then looked around, as if she could see through the rendered eyes. "I see you have brought some acquaintances with you."

"Yeah, we're all here for the high school reunion," Reyes snarked sardonically.

Symmetra did not react. "My staff and I are entrenched on the main administration offices. Please meet us there."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ kudos to **kyro2009** and **BrokenLifeCycle** for their proofreading and their suggestions.


	36. Citadel: Operation Brass Eclipse (II)

Zhu's Hope - Feros

"No wonder they holed up here", Amari commented as they stood before the sturdy gate to the administrative complex. The bluish glow of a powerful hardlight shield blocked the path. "Nothing short of an artillery strike could breach this shield. They must have one hell of a generator up and running."

"You can't build underground shelters on the hundredth floor of a tower, so…" Astrid's voice trailed off.

"The shield will be powered down briefly to let you through", Symmetra spoke over the radio. "Please stand by. It will take a while."

The Quarians hung together uncomfortably in a knot around Shilu'Vael. "She sounds like Agleia", Tali said.

"Symmetra has always been like that", Tracer answered. Her voice grew wistful. "Lúcio and I would talk about her. He thought she had some kind of autism. Or at least some obsessive disorder."

"Your friend and her never got along to begin with", Genji remembered.

"What became of him?" Anika asked.

"He raised so much hell that Vishkar pulled out of most of Latin America. Then he retired. Had a family with some Asian girls, friends of D-Va's."

"'Friends'?" Martinsson asked with a small grin. "How many are we talking about?"

"Four. He met them at a concert in Japan. They were part of some idol group or another." A long sigh. Tracer's melancholy deepened. "Lúcio was the best man I've ever met, period. He had charisma in megaton quantities, and a huge heart to go with it. Everyone loved him."

Shepard did not know what to make of it. For some reason she found herself looking at Reyes, who studiously evaded her gaze. "That sounds like…"

Lena slightly shook her head. "No. I'd have dated him if I liked men." She stared at the door with a vacant expression on her face. "I haven't had a partner for decades. They all move on. I don't."

No one failed to notice the pain on Tracer's features, reason for which Aaliyah gave her a friendly squeeze on a shoulder and a warm look — _come talk to me later, okay?—_ and walked away, towards the Quarians and Sombra. "I suppose you're managing well."

Jaenna was reticent and gruff as usual. "We're doing fine", she allowed. "Your agent has a lot of talent. She learns quickly."

A look at the brown-skinned hacker. "I'm surprised you did not indulge in your shenanigans."

Sombra shuffled her weight between her feet uneasily. " _Sí, bueno…_ I think it's better to just sit back and learn how these chicks do it for now", she argued, discomfort seeping into her voice. After a second's pause, she felt the need to expand on the issue: "I know Alliance and Citadel hardware inside out. There are patterns. If I come across something I haven't seen before, I know enough to improvise. Now, Geth stuff…"

"She's afraid she'll get counter-hacked", Reyes said hoarsely.

"Gabriel!" The hacker shot him a withering glare.

"How's that?" Garrus asked.

The former Talon agents exchanged looks. Sombra was coldly angry. Shepard saw this, and understood Reyes had purposefully hinted about something on the hacker she would have preferred to keep obscured.

"Sombra, you're entitled to your secrets", she said slowly. "You wouldn't like your weaknesses exposed, I get it. You couldn't have stayed off the radar if people knew those. But considering what we're up against, if you _do have_ weaknesses, we have to know. At least, doctors Palukhina, Ziegler and T'Soni should."

Sombra smiled a cold, sharp-edged smile. " _Buen intento, coronel._ "

Reyes stepped forward and stood next to Shepard to support her, his eyes boring into the brown-skinned hacker's. Aaliyah noticed this, but did not take her eyes off Sombra either. Miranda and Valena also saw the confrontation now and kept their distance.

The hacker evaluated the opposition arrayed against her, judged it formidable, and scowled: " _¡Okey, está bien!_ " She glared at Gabriel coldly. "He knows all you need to know", she said sharply, then stalked off to join the trio of Quarians that had been watching in puzzlement.

Shepard turned to Reyes. "Thank you."

Gabriel dismissed it with a shrug. He then tapped a few commands on his own omni-tool to jam any listening devices Symmetra could have around, and explained: "Sombra is made out of nanites, like me. Hers are in a league of their own compared to mine, but she's been experimenting with them ever since Moira stole the original project from—from Angela. But they're still machines. When she connects to something to hack it, the link makes her vulnerable to being hacked in turn. There's firewalls and who knows how many barriers to stop it, but something with enough processing power could do it. I mean, maybe."

Garrus narrowed his eyes. "And the Geth, while not truly sentient, can synergize and put out enough raw power to stand a chance."

"We don't know", Reyes pointed out. "But the idea scares her."

Astrid arched her eyebrows and shrugged. "Well, it's only logical."

"But-but your own AIs can't hack her?" Liara asked.

"Alliance military-grade armor come outfitted with AIs to manage them, assist the wearer and conduct jamming and electronic defense. I wore one such armor when I first met her. She bypassed everything like it just wasn't there", Shepard related. "So no, I don't think they can. At least, not individually. They'd have to act in concert. But the Geth, given their distributed nature, probably are much better at it."

The shield dissipated. "Everything is clear. You can come in now."

The gates slid open. Cream walls, brown ceilings, dark blue floors and dry lights greeted them, the worn masonry of the original tower dressed up to make for the typical sterile furnishings of offices. The furniture itself had been hastily clustered into barricades and further fortified by hardlight screens deployed by the Vishkar engineers; lightly armed colonists and omnics manned them, backed up by the huge and threatening shapes of two mechs similar to —but not as sophisticated or well armed as— their Bulwarks deployed in sentry configuration, ready to give any assaulters a harsh welcome.

A heavyset woman lowered the rifle on her hands. "About time some help arrived! Took you long enough."

"Arcelia, please!" A middle-aged man of Asian features strode forward to meet them. "Welcome to Zhu's Hope", he said awkwardly. "I'm-I'm sorry about my fellow here… it's been very tense here. We were isolated. Nobody answered our distress calls—the Geth have been jamming our communications." Only then he seemed to notice there were non-humans present: "Wait… who are you people?"

"We're the Compact", Shepard answered. "A joint Alliance-Citadel task force set up to investigate the Elysium incident and the activities of the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius." She raised an eyebrow. "You don't read the news often, sir, don't you?"

"Oh, well, no, not really…" Then he saw who Tracer was and his eyes lit up: "Oh my God… Oxton? _The_ Lena Oxton? Tracer?"

Tracer blushed at the sudden attention, to Genji's delight. "Yes, that's me", she said quietly.

"I'm-I'm sorry, I don't mean to impose, but… you were my childhood idol. You know, 'the world could always use more heroes'…"

Lena felt an overwhelming urge to dismiss the man but she could not. She was reminded of two boys in a museum, and how the courage of one and the enthusiasm of the other had touched her heart that day. She smiled sheepishly. "I'm never living it down, am I."

The man beamed at her. "If the cavalry's here, then all is well now." He gestured behind himself: "Supervisor Vaswani is waiting for you. Please, take the stairs up."

"Is there anyone in need of medical attention?" Anika asked, her eyes surveying the people she saw. The only thing she noticed on them now was the exhaustion that followed the release of days of accumulated stress.

"No, thankfully no one is injured here. The supervisor ordered everyone around in here when the attack started." He beckoned them to move on. "She knows all you need to know."

Shepard nodded at the man. "Park, you stay here with our Bulwark, I'll keep you posted."

"Roger, ma'am."

She was already leading the Compact crew into the offices when she realized that, in the same fashion Tracer had been recognised, someone could also tell who Reyes was — except that the mask that would have marked him as the dreaded Reaper lay within a box next to her most cherished mementos, her mind told her the next moment. And Lacroix — had cloaked and was concealed from view, while Sombra had assumed her Silthea identity and looked the part of a gruff Asari veteran with no difficulty.

"I don't like this", Amari muttered roughly. "A minute spent here is a minute for the Geth to build up their strength and box us in."

"Shilu?" Aaliyah asked.

The Quarian girl shook her head. Agleia informed: "They are consolidating alright, but not around here."

"Wonderful", the jumpjet trooper growled.

 _I agree,_ the Starwatch colonel was thinking, suddenly irritated by Amari's line of thinking. "Then let's hurry up and get this over with."

A pair of atmospheric hatch doors separated Symmetra's quarters from the rest of the offices, a fact that caused them to exchange glances. The resulting room was spacious enough to accommodate all of them, and as the rear door slid closed behind their backs, there were a series of pneumatic hisses. A synthesized female voice warned: "Decontamination process initiated. Please stand by."

Astrid and her commander exchanged another knowing look. _Someone is a full-blown neat freak, eh?_

The process turned out to be much longer than expected. A combination of disinfectant sprays, high-powered electron-beam sterilizers, hot air blowers and a vacuum device made it as close to impossible as it could get for a foreign contaminant to survive it.

Then, at last, the hatch door in front of them slid open, and they were treated to a veritable light show. The walls, ceilings and floors were combinations of chrome and blue, but instead of traditional appliances, strategically placed projectors were used to create constructs of solid light to be used as furniture.

As one, all non-humans were awestruck. Garrus was frozen still into place. "Wow…"

"By the Goddess!" Liara gaped at the sight. "This is so beautiful!"

Even the stoic Valena was stunned. "Impressive…"

"If our people only got to see this!" Tali exclaimed. "How much power does it take to maintain all of this?"

"Less than you'd think." A woman strode into the hall from a side room. Her outfit was, for lack of better terms, both exotic and breathtaking at the same time, a delicate combination of gold, silver, turquoise and white, its bright folds a striking contrast to her brown skin and highlighting her long legs. A tall, silvery helmet like contraption with golden sides covered most of her head, leaving only her nose and mouth exposed, long blue-greenish veils sprouting like hair from its backside.

"Greetings, Vaswani-sama", Genji addressed her respectfully. "It is an odd twist of fate that has brought about this meeting."

Symmetra's eyes were concealed, but that did not dispel the feeling of being intensely scrutinized as the woman slightly turned to face each of them, one by one.

"You can't hide in here", she said in the direction of the invisible Widowmaker. "You're needlessly depleting your power supply by maintaining your cloak."

Shepard cut in then: "Mistress Vaswani, time is of the essence. Please allow my operative her methods and let us focus on the issue at hand. We came here hoping to anticipate Saren's next move. Regrettably, we were too late to stop the Geth from raiding your settlement, but how late?"

"Forty hours, nineteen minutes", was the dry response. "Are these all the forces at your disposal?"

Garrus answered that: "Two Bulwark mechs and a fast destroyer with thirty drone fighters in orbit. A hardsuit, a full complement of highly skilled biotics, a Krogan battlemaster, a trio of Quarian specialists in Geth technology, a platoon of omnic troopers, a selection of Starwatch's finest, and two adjutants to the Council Spectres." He stared at the woman in annoyance.

"The Geth are here in overwhelming strength, mister Vakarian", Symmetra replied, unmoved by Garrus' defiance. "Realistically speaking, a lot more firepower will be required to remove them from Feros." With that said, the woman held her left hand in front of her, palm upwards. The projector embedded in it glowed fiercely, and produced a single mote of blinding light that hovered over it. Symmetra plucked it with her right hand, and after a series of weaving gestures, she transformed the mote into a real-time, three-dimensional map of the surrounding environs — thoroughly impressing Liara, Garrus, Valena and the Quarians as she did.

"Shit." Shepard was more concerned with the information on the map itself. There were clusters of Geth signals spread more or less evenly on their tower and on the adjacent ones.

"They've spread their forces around", Wrex observed, then snorted. "Dumb."

"If we did it, it would be unwise", Valena argued. "But our enemy has perfect coordination and communication capabilities. As they are deployed, they can quickly divert forces to concentrate firepower wherever it's needed."

"Yeah, I heard that already on the briefing", the Krogan retorted. "But they didn't put up that much of a fight. That psychotic biotic of yours only needed seconds to trash their biggest mech."

"And you would believe they didn't notice it?" The brown-skinned Viskhar officer gave Wrex a haughty glance. "What interesting ways your mind works."

The hulking, ancient Krogan returned Symmetra's dismissive look with a cold grin full of sharp teeth. "You got a sharp tongue, girl. I hope you also have fourteen hundred years ahead of you to catch up." The challenge was obvious: Wrex did not have the advantages of a synthetic body and superior technology, but he was twenty times older than the Vishkar engineer — and had survived through a life full of dangers.

"Regardless", Miranda said, implicitly cautioning them not to wander off topic, "they will take us much more seriously the next time around."

"Also, honestly, would you fight her?" Aaliyah asked rhetorically while Jacqueline contemplated the exchange with an amused glint in her eyes.

"I'm also a biotic, you know", Wrex argued, but he did not seem as confident. Then he reluctantly admitted: "Only if I could get the drop on her. Heads on? No way."

"Rest assured, the Geth _will_ find an answer to her", Symmetra posited. "I've evaluated the recordings of your skirmish with them. It's readily apparent that they sacrificed the forces they lost to gauge your capabilities."

Shepard and Miranda studied the map intently. "In close quarters, mobility will be key", Aaliyah pointed out. "We have to quickly dispose of enemy groups before they get reinforced."

Miranda was going to add something, but she was interrupted by a deep rumble as the floor noticeably quivered. Everyone listened and tensed up, suddenly expecting the worst, but as quickly as it came, it went away.

"What was that?" Martinsson asked keenly.

The Vishkar officer was reading the report of the AI running the settlement. "The Geth have collapsed a series of passageways", she informed. "The main access points to the skyway, the aqueduct and a dig site have been blocked."

"We've spent enough time here." _And for nothing,_ Aaliyah thought bitterly. She addressed Symmetra dryly: "What did you have to tell us that you couldn't share on the radio?"

The map hovering over Vaswani's left hand vanished. Again Symmetra spun a mote of hardlight, this time into… some sort of scan or microphotography of a bacteria or some other microscopic lifeform. "There is an organic contaminant of some kind on the local atmosphere", she informed. "These chambers are kept sterile through stringent measures."

Anika was shocked: "But… but the people downstairs… and us! We've all been exposed!" She almost turned in shock to Reyes and Sombra and asked them why they had not said anything about it, but held herself back just in time. Nobody had said they could trust Symmetra with their secrets.

Shepard held onto her temper, but if looks could kill, the Viskhar officer would be dead by now. "You have some explaining to do. Fast."

"We're still trying to determine the effects of exposure. So far, there have been only two cases of adverse reactions; I can forward the reports to your medic."

"Do it", she ordered at once. "Everyone, break out the respirators. The last thing we need is someone coming down with some unknown disease."

"Can I check on these two patients?" Ziegler asked.

Symmetra shook her head. "One of them was shipped off-world. The other one is our hydraulics technician and tends to the Prothean aqueduct. He has set up his quarters there — he claimed the humidity helped keep the seizures at bay."

"So he's not here… The Geth surely have gotten to him by now", Garrus said worriedly.

"Too much damage to the aqueducts would seriously imperil the continuity of this colony", the Vishkar engineer informed in an almost inhumanly detached tone.

Layali Amari did not take her eyes off the map. "That is fairly evident, but why cut us off from the skyway and this dig site? What did you find there?"

"Nothing just yet", Symmetra answered. "The teams working there had begun to uncover some tunnels buried beneath the debris. Scans show that they lead into intact chambers. As to the skyway, I can only conjecture. Other than some exploratory forays, we haven't yet conducted any kind of work on the adjacent towers."

Shepard's gut told her that the dig site was the place to go, but she had a colony to protect. "We must clear them from the aqueduct first, and see if this technician is still alive. Move it, people!" she barked. One last look at the Vishkar officer: "Anything else you need to tell us—"

"I'll stay in touch."

Once they were again on the street, immediately they went back into the square and took the northernmost exit, which led to the aqueducts. It did not take long for them to run into the tons of debris blocking the way.

"They're in force on the other side of this barrier", Shilu warned.

"Can you clear it?" Garrus asked their biotics.

Jacqueline smirked. "In my sleep."

"Then get it done. The rest of you, keep her covered."

"Can you tell what do they have on the other side?" Aaliyah asked the Quarians.

"I can find that out." That said, Reyes shifted into his signature smoky form and slipped past the obstruction through holes and cracks. Seconds went by without a word from him:

"Should we wait?" Vakarian asked Shepard.

"No. We have to get through this junction in any case. Jacqueline, you're up."

"How do you want it done? Piece by piece or quickly?"

Garrus eyed her in wonder. "What's the fastest you can do it?"

"Seconds."

"Get in position, everyone! The moment she clears this out we'll have a firefight in our hands."

"Hold it", Reyes' deep voice cut in at last. "You may want to have a look at what they have here."

The former Talon agent had somehow managed to put together a recording. The quality was lousy, but what they saw were some Geth they had not come upon yet: they were humanoid in shape alright, but much more elastic than their brethren, showing no visible weapons. They clung to walls and ceilings on all fours, crawling, hopping, running over them like they were on the ground.

"They're fast", Amari noted.

"And new", Tali chimed in. "We never saw those."

"Probably something the separatists came up with", Shepard mulled, remembering Zenyatta's words.

"How are they armed? I don't see any weapons", Astrid pointed out.

Reyes answered, "I can find that out very fast."

"Don't take your chances", Shepard ordered, noting the cluster of large and small mechs and the group of heavier platforms. "There's a lot of firepower there—"

"Shepard, they're on the move!" Shilu'Vael alerted.

"Where?"

The Quarian was about to answer when a thunderbolt roared on the tunnels as the ceiling on top of the Compact platoon gave way, thousands of tons of masonry collapsing as the explosive charges set by the Geth in anticipation went off.

Tracer had had a brush with death back on Illium, and she had learned from that. As such, she was the fastest to react, and slowed down time on the spot. She had precious seconds to get as many people to safety as she could.

Quickly she assessed the situation. The most valuable person there, right now, was Anika, their medic, and so was the first one to be whisked away.

Shepard, on top of being their commander, could shield others, and so could Astrid; if the enemy followed up with an assault after that sneak attack —and, if their places were swapped, she would—, they would be absolutely necessary, and she took care of them next.

A quick count. Widowmaker was safe, being as she was at their rear as usual. So was Amari. That left Garrus, Park, Sombra, the Quarians and their biotics specialists. Of those, Subject Zero could defuse the whole situation simply by using her skills to nullify gravity on the place, and instead of moving her, she snap-unfroze time, yelled in her ear—"ZERO G!"— and slowed time again.

That cost her two precious tenths of a second, and each time she hauled someone to safety, she had to relax her grip on the flow of time — and the cave in continued to unfold as she moved, slowly but inexorably. She would not be able to save everyone, and she knew it, so she did a triage of sorts: Park she could not help, as his hardsuit was simply too large and heavy for her to move. Sombra was like Reaper in her book; she could simply shift into a smoky form and float away. The next ones to go, then, were the Quarians, as they depended fully on the others for help.

As she whirled around, she caught sight of a gunflash: it was Lacroix, firing at something. There were Geth on the upper floor, right next to the collapsing ceiling — those strange hopping things. One of them was blown into so much debris by Widowmaker's shot; the others kept frozen still, their headlamps looking down at them—

"Shite!" It was lasers, she realized, the headlamps bigger than usual and focused on the Compact. She had to choose now, and hoped that Jacqueline had heard her because if they were not crushed by the collapsing roof, then these Geth would tear them to shreds. She drew her sidearms, powerful Locust submachine guns now instead of her auto pistols, and charged forward.

Jacqueline had immediately reacted to Lena's warning and unleashed her null gravity field. Valena had also reacted, deploying a bubble barrier large enough to stop the debris still falling towards them. Tracer took advantage of the reduced gravity and timed her jump upwards so it was enough for her to reach the floor where their attackers were—

—but her grip on time was loosening, and as she moved, so did their enemies. The hoppers fired, and the tunnel became a deadly jigsaw puzzle of zero-g suspended debris and blazing hot beams.

The heat pierced through Shepard's gut before she had time to feel ingravid. She gasped at the same time her onboard AI threw a tantrum of red warning signals and audio alerts. The burn was quickly extinguished by a flash of cold and numbness as the life support systems kicked in:

"Medic!" she heard Garrus call out. "Shepard is injured!"

"I'm _fine!"_ she yelled angrily.

Park ignored her and stood right in the line of fire, shielding her and the others who had been caught in the kill zone. A purple-red bubble materialized around his hardsuit as he triggered the short-lasted particle barrier, and simultaneously stepped on the gas pedal to rocket-blast upwards towards their attackers. The hoppers scattered around, denying him a target, but however fast they were, Tracer hopelessly outclassed them, and zipped along the tunnel leaving piles of wreckage in her wake.

"I got your back", Lena heard Reyes say on his grim, deep voice.

"Thanks."

"I'm here!" Anika said out loud.

Aaliyah looked in irritation around her, noticing that, with the exception of Jacqueline, the rest of their biotics had all sustained hits. "Look after _them!_ " she snarled, and struggled back to her feet, deploying her shield to cover them.

"Enemy is disengaging", Widowmaker reported.

"Tracer, Reyes and Park, give them chase", Astrid ordered.

"But don't stray far!" Garrus added. "Splitting us up would play for them now."

"This is bad." Ziegler was crouched next to Liara. She had been pierced all the way through by two beams and had dropped without a noise.

"Get her to safety, doctor." Sombra put a round-shaped beacon into her hands, shoved her next to the unconscious T'Soni, and pressed the big button in the middle. Immediately they vanished.

"Where did they go?" Garrus bellowed.

"Our shuttle", was the hacker's reply. "Safest place in this rock for them."

"I agree", Martinsson approved. "Good thinking, there." She noticed Lawson was applying a medi-gel syrette to a wound on her left breast. "Can you still fight?"

"Yes", Miranda answered, though pain flickered on her face with each breath. "It's just a flesh wound."

Wrex eyed her. The veteran Krogan had sustained multiple hits, but it would take a lot more than that to bring him down. Coolly he berated Miranda: "You're prancing around almost naked. Get some decent armor, woman." Both Martinsson and Amari grunted their agreement at Wrex's quip.

"I'll take that under advisement", was the dry answer.

"What about the Geth on the other side of this?" Astrid asked.

"They aren't moving in", Shilu'Vael answered. "They are deployed to hold their position should we break through."

"They are playing for time", Valena realized, then stared at Sombra. "If you can teleport people between places so easily, how come we didn't use your technique to simply get where we need to go?"

"You said 'so easily', and it's not that easy. Teleporting two people at a time is about the best I can do. It only _seems_ simple, _señorita._ "

The Asari did not let go. "I understand your reticence to share your knowledge with the Citadel, but why be so reluctant to do so with your own kin?"

Reyes answered that as he rejoined them, Park and Tracer behind him: "You're assuming they're Sombra's kin." The rest floated around unsaid: _they're not._

The hacker scowled. "This secret did not come cheap. And there is nothing the Alliance could offer me."

"How about the survival of your culture, girl." Wrex was, yet again, very sharp.

"You can talk all you want. I'm on your side and all that, but I'm not sharing my methods. You don't like my reasons, your problem."

"Then let's get the most out of that." Shepard had almost been swamped by a surprising outburst of anxiety when she had heard that Liara had been seriously injured. Her determined self harshly reminded her that she could not afford that weakness now, so with an effort she boxed that concern away and stood straight with difficulty. Her injury was no small thing either: the laser beam had cut a clean hole through her lower gut. Medi-gel and nanites would restore her, but it would take the better part of an hour for that to heal that kind of wound, and it would Hurt with a capital H to move around. "You two", she pointed at the hacker and Reyes, "find a good place to set up a gate near this tec's place."

Gabriel raised a hand. "I can do something about your exposure to the thing Symmetra mentioned."

"And that is?"

"I scrub your insides."

Tracer scowled. "Bloody hell, no way."

Shepard first impulse also was to roundly refuse the proposal. Curing a disease —if that was what it was— by inviting another plague in did not sound wise in the least, but then she reasoned that if Reyes wanted to plant his nanites on them —whatever he could use it for— then he had had plenty of chances already, and Anika would warn her if she detected anything like that on the mandatory medical tests they had to undergo between missions — or she would be dead.

"Alright. I'll go first."

"Ma'am—!"

Sharply she cut Astrid short: "We can't go around incubating some kind of sickness! If something happens to me, Garrus is in charge. No 'buts', anyone." She stared at Reyes, hard. "Go on, do it."

Gabriel approached her. For a moment she was possessed of a horrible weakness as the memories of their closest encounter —deck 7, cargo hold 5 on the London— rushed into her mind. An astoundingly shocked voice within her questioned her sanity again.

"Open your mouth."

Shepard closed her eyes and committed herself.

"Take a deep breath."

She did as she was bid, expecting once again to experience the numbing, horrible cold she had felt back then, but no such thing happened — in fact, she did not feel anything out of the ordinary, and that caused her to wonder why Reyes did not radiate that aura of intense cold anymore. She had forgotten about it.

"That's it."

"What?"

A smirk appeared on the grim face. "I don't need that many nanites to get the job done. What? Disappointed?"

Aaliyah had no time for idle chat. "Then do it with the rest, and get going."

"Right." The smirk vanished. "One thing. I can tell already these spores aren't hard to clean up. The doc's stuff would be better at it than my own."

Shepard returned his look. "You mean…"

Valena understood before she did: "The Vishkar officer did not say whether the colonists had been told about this contaminant. The hydraulics technician requested to be allowed to set up his accommodations in more humid environments. Why would they allow it?"

"Because they're studying the effects of the spore on different environments, perhaps", Miranda suggested. "He would be a test subject. If it is indeed like that, then Vishkar is intentionally exposing the colonists to an unknown organism."

"But why?" Layali wondered. "What do they have to gain?"

"Vishkar has always been involved in less than ethical pursuits", Genji said grimly.

"We'll hold them accountable. After we clean this up. So let's get our job done first, people", Shepard spurred them. "Reyes, do your thing."

The Starwatch agents reluctantly submitted themselves to Gabriel's 'treatment'. When it was Tracer's turn, Genji looked on and quoted, "'I will just save your lame asses. No sweat'."

Reyes stopped at that. He had dismissively spoken those words to a wounded Lena two decades prior on the depths of Pokhara.

"You wouldn't have believed anything else I said." He turned to Tracer again. "Open your mouth."

She did. After it was done, though, she asked: "And what would you have said instead?"

Reyes did not answer. He turned around instead and walked away, towards Garrus and Valena.

The Citadel agents and Wrex, having witnessed the exchange and the reluctance of their Alliance colleagues, were even more distrustful of Reyes, but followed their lead. The Krogan threatened with a piercing stare, "If there's anything fishy about this I'll make sure people never forget about you."

The former Blackwatch commander smirked at that. "You wouldn't be the first to try."

* * *

Shepard stepped through the gate with a pained groan. Reyes and Sombra were waiting for her on the other side. "Well?"

"Clear here", Gabriel answered hoarsely. "Neither of us saw or heard a thing."

Next appeared Astrid, then the Quarians. At once they got to work. "We can detect no Geth signals in the immediate area", Shilu reported at once.

Aaliyah grunted in agreement. She was about to quip that they had not detected the hoppers either, but both former Talon agents were saying the same so she had to believe her. "Alright. Let's get moving."

"Colonel?" It was Anika. "I have an update on Liara. She's stable."

At once a huge weight tumbled off her shoulders. "Thank all gods", she breathed in relief with a sigh, and grimaced as pain lanced her belly. "How serious is it?"

"Right lung, small intestines and forearm. She will recover, but it will take a while."

"Thanks, doc."

"She doesn't need me here right now. Could you ask Sombra to come and fetch me?" Aaliyah signaled at the hacker, who nodded and vanished where she stood. "Oh, here she is. Thanks, ma'am."

Tali consulted their map. "The control room where the technician set up his quarters should be one hundred and fifteen meters that way." She pointed down the corridor to their south.

Shepard squared herself. "Then let's go."

They advanced warily, but, true to Reyes, Sombra and the Quarians, there were no Geth nearby, which struck everyone as odd. "Shouldn't they be, well, tearing apart this aqueduct or something?" Astrid asked out loud.

Valena was perturbed. "When they cut off the colony from it, we assumed they would be planning to destroy it. We were wrong. This was meant only as a distraction."

Wrex commented, "That leaves the skyway and the dig site. Which one will it be?"

Shepard still thought it was the dig site, but just to be sure, she asked Amari: "Can you scout the skyway without exposing yourself?"

Layali took her time to answer. "Before meeting those hopping, climbing things, I would have said yes. I was counting that I could hide under the skyway and the Geth shouldn't be able to shoot at me there. But now… honestly, no, ma'am. I can't."

Garrus mused, "Who would have thought a bunch of tin cans would be this crafty…"

Reyes laughed grimly. It was a deep, unnerving sound. "Then you get a taste of what both Omnic Crisis were like."

The 'control room' was a metal shack built out of a cargo container reassembled next to the water treatment machinery installed on top of the aqueduct. Inside, it was a mess. The control panels and terminals were covered in dust. Discarded food packages and other trash were piled on a corner. Empty pill bottles were strewn all over the place.

Astrid took a deep breath. "Someone has a drug habit."

The man lying on the single dirty bunk was covered in sweat, his face livid red, teeth gritting, fists clenched tightly. Anika ran to him and started working on him at once.

Jacqueline picked up one of the bottles. "Painkillers." A snort. "Small stuff."

"Any syringes anywhere? Or an injector?" Ziegler asked. She got a bunch of negatives in response, and exclaimed: "This is criminal! It's not like a nanite shot is something so expensive!"

Reyes approached the bunk. "He's got the spores. Big time."

Garrus grunted. "They want to 'determine the effects of exposure'? Then they should look no further."

Anika pulled a nanite syrette out of a satchel, plugged it to a specific port on her omni-tool, programmed a few settings, removed it, and stabbed it on the man's neck. "That's going to take a few minutes."

Sombra was tapping commands on thin air next to the dusty terminals. Tali watched her work, and the hacker noticed her: "What?" she asked with a thin grin.

"Oh, nothing, excuse me." She shifted her weight between her feet and crossed her arms defensively. "I can't stop thinking about what your colleague said."

"He spilled the beans, didn't he?" 'Silthea' shrugged briefly. Her fingers did not stop their dance. "The good colonel made sense, though."

"If he hadn't said anything—"

"You wouldn't have imagined it?" Again a thin grin, this time a proud one. "That's the idea." She briefly glanced at the Quarian: "And it bothers you, _¿cierto?_ "

"I can't imagine what you'd want. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me. You can change your shape, hack through almost anything, become intangible and teleport. What could you possibly want that the Compact can offer you?"

Another shrug. "All these things cost a lot of materials and energy, _señorita._ Someone has to bankroll me", she answered evasively, very much aware of the looks she was starting to get from the rest.

Tali, however, was not, and continued her prodding. "It doesn't look to me like there's anything they can offer you that you couldn't just get by yourself elsewhere."

Sombra was silent for a while. Finally she said triumphantly: " _Lo encontré._ "

Shepard had been listening to their conversation, silently praising Tali'Zorah for her candor. She promised herself to continue inquiring where she had left off, and asked: "What did you find?"

"This man has tried to report several times what was happening to him, but he never managed to send anything out. He always was in pain, and the more he tried to send his reports the worse he felt. I found all the drafts he wrote."

Anika was running diagnostics on the man; he had not relaxed one bit yet, but at least he had opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and feverish. "The spores… they are all over his brain. Especially around the areas that regulate pain intensity."

Valena turned towards Reyes. "It seems we owe you our thanks."

Suddenly, Symmetra's voice called out imperiously on the radio: "Colonel Shepard, your presence is badly needed in the colony square! My staff, guards and personnel are leaving their posts and ignoring my messages!"

* * *

 _Author's note:_ Apologies but the Feros mission is growing humongous and very challenging to write. I got sidetracked trying to put together a one-shot story I could submit along with my application for a writing position over at Blizzard but I didn't complete it on time. (I don't have any publishing experience, and no idea of where to get it either, so I figured this was the next best thing to try.) Better luck next time, I guess.

My thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for putting up with me, and an apology to **The core of justice** \- it was the story you requested that I tried to finish to submit to Blizzard. When I read the position had been already filled I kind of got disheartened. I still want to complete it so I have something solid to offer in the future.


	37. Citadel: Operation Brass Eclipse (III)

Zhu's Hope - Feros

Shepard stepped through the gate again, leaving the musty passageways near the aqueduct behind her to reenter the Vishkar administrative complex, and was treated to a disquieting sight. Around a dozen colonists and engineers had been restrained by omnics, some of them outright pinned to the floor, some others being held by humanoid frames. They all had the same fevered looks of someone stricken with unimaginable pain they had first seen on the poor hydraulics technician they had rescued.

Tracer went pale. "Bloody hell."

Anika turned to look at Reyes: "The spore?"

Gabriel bowed his head without looking away from the colonists. "You said it, doc."

Martinsson was also perturbed by the situation. "I'm surprised you didn't notice it when we first left."

The grim, mustached man shook his head. "I didn't probe them like I did with that tec. And sure as hell I didn't scrub them as I scrubbed you."

Sombra was working on her omni-tool, next to the portable gateway she jealously guarded. "This is what happened here."

Garrus examined the recording the hacker had sent to the squad. The colonists had been tending to their business —guarding the entrance to the compound, checking their supplies, monitoring sensors or just idling by— when they had all been simultaneously smitten with seizures. Those closest to the gate had been the least affected by the phenomenon and had raced to help their fellows, but the pain had worsened the further away they went from the door.

"Eventually they figured out they had to go outside", Miranda observed. "They reached for their survival gear and weapons and then went out."

"Those whom we did not catch, that is." Symmetra walked towards them, a pair of drones in attendance — one projecting a powerful barrier around her, the other apparently some kind of environmental control unit.

Anika shot her a baleful glare. "This is all your fault", she said, surprising everyone with what only could be barely contained rage. "I have no idea what kind of nefarious program Vishkar was pursuing here." She paused briefly for effect before adding: "Yet."

"The company's interests and plans are a private business matter, doctor Ziegler", the chief engineer retorted with dispassion.

Shepard took one step towards Symmetra. One. "Except that, as a Compact field officer officially endorsed both by the Alliance and the Citadel, I have plenipotentiary powers to demand compliance from any kind of civilian and military authorities under the jurisdiction of either power. Last time I checked, Feros was an Alliance colony. Which means, I get to order you to tell me what the hell is it that Vishkar was up to here." She left the rest unsaid: _and you don't get to say a goddamned thing about it. Bitch._

Sombra snickered. " _¿En serio, coronel?_ Why bother? I can figure that out myself."

"Hold it." The Starwatch colonel kept her coldly furious eyes on Symmetra. "If you still fail to cooperate, then my agent here has the means to forcibly acquire the information I am demanding, whether you help or not."

Symmetra was not intimidated, though: "Colonel, that information is not available to me either. No data is stored locally. I was dispatched here with express instructions to set up sensors and route the output directly off planet."

A few instants of silence followed. Except for Sombra, all of the Compact agents imitated the Starwatch colonel. The only noises that could be heard were the groans and wails of the colonists writhing in pain.

"I can tell you my suppositions about what is actually taking place here", the Vishkar officer said reluctantly in the end, capitulating in the face of the formidable opposition arrayed against her, "though it's all on a speculative basis."

Shepard's face did not change. "Start talking."

Symmetra nodded briefly. "Through the limited medical equipment at our disposal, I was able to determine that the spores, after being inhaled, work their way to the brain and attach themselves to the regions governing reasoning and pain regulation, mimicking neurons in the process."

Anika was crouched next to a group of colonists, already administering medicines and nanite shots, Reyes assisting her. "So you're telling me that Vishkar purposefully neglected to equip this settlement with adequate medical care."

The engineer tapped her omni-tool a few times. "I filed requests for appropriate equipment and personnel before and after my arrival. Here they are."

Aaliyah and Astrid both read the requests she had forwarded them. The documents were scrupulously detailed and phrased in perfect bureaucratese.

"Let me guess", Martinsson said. "They never came."

Symmetra forwarded them another document. "This is the answer I received to my last requisition."

Garrus needed a few instants to orient himself, the dry language a bit unusual for him. "They could not attend to the request 'at that time'? That's callous."

"So, ever since being posted here, you were supplied with a variety of hardware, ranging from hydraulics machinery to arms and security, but almost no health care at all?" Miranda asked pointedly.

Shepard eyed her coolly. "So they rebuffed your request, and that was it?"

Symmetra turned her face towards the Starwatch colonel and retorted sharply: "Of course not. Most of what we have I was able to procure outside regular channels."

"I surmise the decontamination equipment installed around your rooms was also 'procured outside regular channels'."

That actually rattled the engineer. "Yes. Yes it was. Paid for out of my own pocket."

The Starwatch colonel could have argued that it was at the very least an ethical breach not to tend to the colony's needs with the same vigor, but she decided that could wait. "Suppose you convince me. Why would Vishkar do that?"

"Let me repeat—"

"Yeah, this is all a supposition, I got that. Talk. Clock's ticking."

Symmetra was again rattled, but held onto herself and answered: "Vishkar has purposefully refused the colonists adequate health care and instead installed countless atmospheric sensors and measuring instruments to observe the effects of the spore on the local population. As I have already said, the spore influences the response to pain and warps the reasoning of its host. While some parasites induce that kind of effect on animals back on Earth, this one seems to elicit responses common to all infected hosts on a given area, and can entice them to behave in specific ways, as you just saw. How it achieves this in concert and to what end are both mysteries. I suppose Vishkar is interested in finding the answers to those questions."

Out of all people, Jacqueline clenched her teeth and fists. "The more I learn about eggheads the less I want to know", she growled. "So these fuckers turned a whole colony into their little lab experiment! And you helped!"

"Shut up." Shepard's voice was unusually low.

"What? 'Shut up'? You're just letting her get away with it?! She—!"

"I said—shut. Up." A deep breath, then: "You", she addressed Symmetra. "You're a hardlight prodigy, right? Prove it. Grab your weapon. You're coming with us."

* * *

"What the hell are these idiots doing!" Amari growled.

Astrid had her eyes on the map Tali, Shilu and Jaenna were maintaining. "Walking straight into a trap, that's what they're doing."

The map was a mess. Red icons were distributed more or less evenly all over the tower, with some clusters indicating strong points. The small cluster of green icons that represented the wayward colonists seemed to be moving right towards one such point.

Miranda, however, was not so sure. "Or not." She pointed at a wall on the map. The colonists were walking straight through it. "This points at an uncharted passageway."

Symmetra frowned. "It was not revealed when we first mapped the tower."

"Who conducted the mapping?"

"A team of surveyors", the engineer said half-heartedly.

"There you have it", Garrus said matter-of-factly. "Probably they were 'compelled' to leave it out of the report."

 _That's too convenient,_ Shepard thought. _But not our business right now._

"I can get ahead of them and cut them off", Tracer proposed.

"Sombra and I will back her up", Reyes seconded her.

After a second's thought and an inquiring glance at Garrus and Valena, Shepard nodded. "Agreed, but don't take any chances. If they throw something your way that you can't handle we'll be too far away to help. Don't engage unless you're in an absolutely advantageous position."

"Aye aye, luv."

"Yes ma'am."

" _Como usted diga, coronel._ "

Oxton and 'Silthea' vanished where they stood, whereas Reyes simply ran forward until the passageways swallowed him. The rest of the Compact crew followed behind, warily charting a course through the corridors as they tried to elude contact with the Geth and close in on the wayward colonists. In this regard, their vanguard helped, as they occasionally grazed an enemy that tried to pin them down to no avail.

Astrid was studying the map as they went, noticed the icons were steadily moving towards a certain exit, and realized their course took them straight to the skyway: "Holy shit… tell me these idiots aren't going where I think they're going!"

Wrex scowled. "The Geth will make short work of them if they go that way."

"Redoubtable, this is Shepard. We need to engage the enemy over open ground. Requesting air support and reinforcements, over."

Moreau's voice came back somewhat garbled but intelligible: "Aye aye, ma'am. Just think of me the next time you go ashore. Y'know, a good bourbon would be nice."

"We'll buy you a crate if we pull this one off without a hitch", she replied in a mechanical tone that masked her concern. "Oxton, Reyes, Sombra, I need you to head to the skyway and scout it. Park and the Bulwark will meet you there and secure the exit once you've cleared it."

It was easy to picture Tracer frowning as she quipped: "It's going to get ugly."

"I know, and you're the best ones for the job. I'm getting you air support."

"Roger", Gabriel acknowledged.

"Amari, you're up next. Find a good spot in the upper levels and stay covered. Take Lacroix with you."

She snapped a salute and hurried away.

"I should go with them too", Garrus said quietly.

"Agreed", Shepard concurred, "but Layali can only carry one trooper with her." She could have added that there hardly was any love lost between those two, but it was not necessary. However much Amari hated Widowmaker's guts, they both were professionals.

"Ma'am, I'm getting a bunch of lamphead heavies at the tower on the other end of the skyway", Moreau reported. "You sure you want to go that way? That highway thing looks tough, but if the Geth toss a tac-nuke at you—"

"Message received", she answered curtly. "I don't like it much either, but so far it seems that's where we gotta go. ETA on the air support?"

"6 minutes and counting, ma'am."

"Hope it's not too long."

Far and ahead of them, Tracer saw the first of the colonists turn around the corner and start approaching her. It was the mature man with Asian features that had first recognized her. Now his face was covered in sweat and red with strain.

"You mustn't go any further!" She warned him. "The Geth have staked out the skyway! You'll only get yourselves killed!"

Pain and resignation were equally written in the man's eyes: "Miss Oxton… Tracer… We… I know, but I can't stop, it hurts… It hurts so much!" And indeed, he did not break stride, despite being fully aware that he was going straight into harm's way.

For a ghastly moment, it appeared to Tracer with unreal, horrifying clarity that the man had been turned into a puppet, and something was pulling at his strings.

"I got something for the pain", she offered, and reached into her first aid kit.

"Don't—!" The man screamed. He raised his rifle defensively—but Tracer was no longer there. The colonists behind the man looked around for her.

"Geth might be in these corridors already and we can't protect you!" she yelled from cover. "Wait here for our medics! Let us help!"

"Stay away from us!" a woman yelled. "Don't follow us!"

But Tracer knew that letting them go would end badly, so she acted on her own. She slowed down time, zapped right amidst the cluster of colonists, and started snatching weapons from their hands—

—but one of them would not let go: "Hey!"

That was not the time for niceties. It was not just philosophy and koans that she had picked up from Genji and Zenyatta. A sharp strike with the side of her hand, a scream, and the man's right hand fell limply to a side—

There was a warning yell, a bright flash, and a thunderbolt, but Tracer did not hear it. Her last conscious thought was to wonder why.

* * *

Reyes lapsed back into solid form too late to help: " _Damn._ "

"I LOST TRACER!" Ziegler screamed, back with the rest of the group.

"Reyes! Talk to me!" Shepard ordered.

"Cloaked Geth. They just ambushed the colonists while she was trying to stop them. One scored a solid hit on her. She's gone."

Horror rippled through the Starwatch crew. Astrid blanched: "Gone?"

"She's vanished. I don't see a body. She got away, but I don't see her."

"Sombra?"

"I don't know either, _coronel_!" the hacker snapped. "She's not near us, that's all I can say."

Aaliyah felt a chill run down her spine but suppressed it. "The colonists are the priority now! Move in to shield them!"

The colonists had panicked and retreated in disarray down the same corridor they had already traversed, leaving half a dozen bodies in their wake as the Geth stalkers raked them with gunfire. The former Talon agents intervened, but as they started taking a toll on the assailants, they broke contact and cloaked again to seemingly vanish without a trace.

"Sombra, deploy a gate there for us and another at the administrative compound. Then drop everything and find Tracer."

" _Sí, coronel._ "

Ziegler slammed Symmetra against a wall: " _This is all your fault!_ " she screamed to her face, then added through gritted teeth: "Hope that Tracer is alive. Pray that she is. Or I swear to God, I'll… I'll…"

Everyone stared at her in surprise. Only after a second someone reacted: Valena approached and laid a hand on Anika's right arm.

"Those responsible will be dealt with, doctor. Later."

Anika still did not move, her teary eyes fixated on the Vishkar officer's, who stared back blankly — whether overwhelmed by the situation or disregarding it, it was not possible to say.

"Geth mechs approaching down the skyway!" Amari alerted then. "Distance nine kilometers and closing in!"

"Move it, people!" Shepard harried them, secretly and uncomfortably grateful for Layali's intervention. Once they all were by the huge arching gate to the skyway, she ordered in machinegun succession: "Sanitize this place! Get me fixes on those stalkers! Reyes and Ziegler, tend to the colonists!"

Despite the grim situation, the former Talon agent had a moment to smirk. "Been some time since I was told _not_ to kill people."

Next to him, Anika was choking back the tears, trying to focus on the people they had to save… people indirectly responsible for what had happened to Tracer—

 _NO!_ She squeezed her eyes closed. _It was that… them… those Vishkar monsters! And their flunky!_ And yet, her hands ached with tension, and her lips and eyelids trembled with the rage she was desperately trying to holding back.

"Doc." A heavy hand was laid on her shoulder.

" _Later!_ " Ziegler nearly screamed, almost pushed over the edge by that small act of kindness. "I have work to do."

Gabriel recognized this for what it was and let the matter rest. Instead, he got to work on his own.

"Stay away from us!" the heavyset man with Asian features yelled through gritted teeth. "You're only going to make it worse!"

"Just breathe", Reyes said, very much aware that his deep voice was not the most assuaging of sounds. "It won't hurt you. Just breathe."

"Stop it! I tell you, you don't know what—"

At that point the man froze.

Then dropped to his knees, and fell flat on his face.

At the same time a chorus of shrieks rose from the rest of the colonists:

"I need help over here!" Reyes yelled.

Ziegler ran up to him: "What did you just do?"

"I just gave him the nanites, as with the other tec."

Anika turned the man around slowly—and only then did she realize that it was too late. Blood was seeping out of his right ear. She looked in fright at the others, and saw how they all were tearing at their scalps in pain.

"Stop what you're doing!" she ordered Gabriel, then she reported: "Shepard, sanitizing these people is—won't end well. We can't risk it."

"What do you mean?"

"Reyes just tried to disinfect one in the same way he did with the technician back at the aqueduct. The man burst a blood vessel."

However bad that was, it did not readily jump to Aaliyah's mind why that meant they could not heal them all, but she was an officer, not a doctor.

"You… have… to let us… go", a woman with Latin features said painstakingly. "You… don't… we'll all die here… for nothing."

"Then the ones back at the colony…" Genji blanched.

"No", Symmetra cut in. "The settlers we left under guard there are in good condition."

"But that doesn't make any goddamn sense!" Astrid swore. "If we could cure those then why this is happening now?"

Shepard asked, dreading the answer: "If we let you go where would you go?"

The woman raised a hesitant hand and pointed shakily. In the direction of the skyway.

 _Just fucking great,_ she thought morosely, but there was no hesitation in her mind. "Reyes", she addressed her once-nemesis, "can I trust you to get rid of the Geth behind us?"

The man laughed quietly. "How many can I kill before they make me stop?"

"It's open season. Jacqueline, you work with him." The biotic opened her mouth to protest, but Shepard cut her short: "We have to get these people across the skyway. I need to be able to focus entirely on the enemy in front of us. I'm trusting our rearguard to Astrid, Reyes, and you. Prove me right."

The bald biotic girl needed a moment to understand. She smirked ferociously. "You betcha."

"Good." She exchanged looks with her second-in-command, who needed no explanation —she was to cover Jacqueline if push came to shove—, then turned towards the rest as Park and the Bulwark turned around a corner to join them. "Just in time. Miranda and Valena, protecting our mechs is your top priority."

"Colonel, I can do that", Symmetra cut in. "I can shield them."

"How?"

In response, the Vishkar engineer produced a small spheroid from a satchel and wove a complicated pattern of hardlight around it with dazzling speed. The end result was a small, hovering droid. "Hardlight barrier projectors", she explained. "They will screen your mechs against thick enemy fire."

Shepard stared at her, hard. The woman was impenetrable, given how her eyes were concealed by the helmet-like contraption on her head, but her body language was not. Symmetra wanted to be useful to them. Out of guilt or convenience, she could not say, but if she was willing and able to help she would take it.

"Alright. It's your responsibility. We lose our Bulwark, dealing with their mechs over open ground is going to be a world of pain, and getting a replacement hardsuit for Park is going to be a problem here. So stay on top of them." She turned towards Vakarian. "Garrus, you want to come with us, or you think you'd be of more use as a sniper?"

"Just tell me where you need me", the Turian deferred to her.

"Nonsense. You know where you're best. So?"

A nod. "I'll be more effective as a sniper. I'll find a good vantage point here."

"You do that. Get me some kills."

At that moment, the distant thunder of approaching aircraft engines reached them. "Our air support!" Shilu'Vael reported.

"The moment they start hitting the mechs, we break cover and advance. Get ready!"

The drone aircraft roared over them as they moved in to attack the Geth. The synthetics, for some reason or another, did not have airborne forces of their own, but this did not mean they were unprepared to meet the threat: the mechs, both Armatures and Colossi, froze into place, took aim, and crimson beams lanced at the flyers. Explosions blotted three of the ten aircraft out of the sky. The remainder loosed their attacks in turn — creating the perfect distraction for their Bulwark to break cover, lock on one of the mechs, and fire.

Except that their enemy was not particularly vulnerable to that kind of maneuvers. Return fire was almost simultaneous. "We're taking fire here!" Miranda bellowed.

"I'm covering you", Park replied, and surged forward. The point defense system on his hardsuit intercepted the next volley: "Anti-materiel fire… they retain that much punch this far?"

Jaenna sent an alert through the squad network: "The shooters are up there in the tower, on the other end of the skyway." She highlighted some icons on the map for their benefit.

"That's twelve kilometers away", Valena noted.

"Enemy mech has a lock on our Bulwark!" Shilu'Vael warned.

"INCOMING!" Tali'Zorah screamed and ducked for cover behind a low wall on the middle of the skyway.

"Out of the way, out of the way!" Shepard yelled.

Park, however, did not move away from the line of fire, but triggered the short-lived particle barrier instead, right before the weapon port on the enemy mech glowed fiercely and spat a high-velocity plasma toroid at them. The barrier successfully absorbed the attack, but the hardsuit pilot informed: "I'm down to composite shields for the next minute."

"Moving to engage." Amari took to the sky then, and immediately dove to take cover underneath the skyway.

"Don't do anything stupid, Layali", Anika voiced worriedly.

"Never."

The drone fighters surged behind the mechs, having also used the bulk of the skyway alongside with that of the tower itself to deny targets to the Geth, and again attacked. Again there were explosions as the Geth returned fire, also taking a toll as another flyer plummeted leaving a thick trail of smoke behind it, but the exchange had cost them their largest walkers.

"This is our chance! Let's go!" Shepard bellowed and deployed her squadshield. "Form up behind me!" She yelled at the colonists.

The decision, however, turned out to be premature, as long-range rifle fire continued to hammer them, and the shots that escaped Park's point defense and impacted her barrier were quickly degrading it: "The shield is giving out!"

"I'm on it!" Valena raised a screen in her stead: "This won't hold for long!"

" _Objectif dans ma ligne de mire_ ", Widowmaker informed coolly from her sniper's nest, several stories above skyway level, and started shooting.

"I see them too!" Vakarian echoed her.

The enemy also saw them. Again, return fire was near instantaneous, and just about as accurate as Garrus almost found out in the worst possible way: "Damn! Shepard, we're taking countersniper fire. It's too exposed for us here."

"You should join us here if you can."

" _Affirmatif._ " Lacroix cloaked, waited, and cautiously peeked around the thick wall behind which she had taken cover—

—and nearly got her head blown off. " _Merde_ ", she swore quietly. " _Mon colonel,_ we're pinned down here. The Geth see through our cloaking."

"And we don't see through theirs", Garrus quipped angrily.

"We can task our artillery against their shooters, now that the mechs are mostly gone", Valena suggested.

"Reyes, have you found the stalkers?" Aaliyah asked.

"Yes, but it's not easy", came the answer. "Their cloaking tech is years ahead of ours."

The wail of twisting metal filled the channel briefly, then Jacqueline said: "Crushing them into heaps of junk kills them just fine." That caused Shepard to snort to herself: _now there's an idea that paid off._

"Omnic reinforcements inbound!" Shilu'Vael informed. Above them, roughly two dozen meteors streaked downwards, to hit the other end of the skyway and the tower they had to reach.

"Are we too late to join the fight, colonel?" It was Lumiscant. "I hope you have left something for us."

"Plenty to go around", she said sharply, then yelled: "Onward!"

Having to deploy omnics en masse was a decision no commander wanted to take, if only because it was a highly sensitive matter — to their human comrades, it was a ghastly reminder of the worst of the Omnic Crisis; to the Citadel races, witnessing the frightening efficiency of synth soldiers was a taste of their worst nightmares; and to the omnics themselves, not being deployed could be read as insulting or demeaning as carelessly tossing them at a problem until it went away.

But right now, they were a much welcome sight, for they were as coordinated and accurate as their Geth opponents.

They had about a quarter of the way to go when disaster again struck. Amari had seized the distraction provided by Lumiscant and her fellows and surged from below the skyway, carefully picking targets while staying partly in cover, wary of cloaked stalkers or hoppers—

—forgetting that this enemy was not fooled by such distractions. The same high-powered rounds that had been relentlessly hammering Shepard's barrier and Park's mech tore through her like she was made of paper: "Layali is hit! Layali is hit!" Anika warned.

Only this time, it was not like it had been when Widowmaker had almost killed her. There was no screaming on the radio, no mayday call on her part.

To Shepard, that silence was dreadful, but she restrained her emotions. "Mercy. What is her status?"

"She is badly mauled, colonel, but the life support system on her suit still works", the AI informed with concern, bringing up an orbital feed of the place: a blue-black dot was zoomed into until it became a round parachute.

"Take the dropship and get to her LZ. Make sure a couple of drone fighters cover the place in the meantime."

"Yes, Shepard."

"Goddamn this fucking rock", she swore under her breath, then ordered with steel in her voice: "Keep pushing forward. You see a lamplight, smoke it. Make your shots count!"

At that moment, Park's hardsuit slumped unceremoniously forward: "Critical damage to right leg servos", he informed coolly. "I'm disabled here."

Valena and Shepard traded glances. Without him, they were down to the artificial cover they could provide—

—so they would have to make do with something else instead: by means of sheer biotic power, the Asari tore a slab of rocklike material off the skyway and floated it between them and the oncoming fire: "This won't hold for long", she warned. "A good anti-tank round will blow this to dust."

"I can provide another layer of defense", Symmetra offered, weaving another barrier droid as she spoke.

"That won't be enough."

"Then you need something tougher than that, girl!" Wrex bellowed, and broke through the ranks in a mad dash forward.

"Oh my god… he's going to get himself killed!" Anika voiced.

"Miss Lawson?" Valena asked, and gestured at the slab of rock she was floating in front of Park's disabled hardsuit. "Could you please take care of this for me?"

Miranda understood. "Just don't die."

* * *

"Ma'am? I think we're done here", Martinsson reported thirteen minutes later. "Neither Reyes nor Sombra can find any Geth here."

Shepard sighed. She felt old and tired. "Mistress Vaswani, get a gate up and running. Astrid, get your team over here." She swallowed before asking: "Any news on Tracer?"

" _No, coronel_ ", Sombra answered. "I'm still looking around."

"You do that."

They were taking a moment's rest as Brulirea's and Lumiscant's omnics searched the tower. Getting there had cost them all enough. Layali had had to be fished from under the debris blanketing the Ferosian surface, her mangled flight suit encased in a layer of polyurethane foam nearly half a meter thick, courtesy of the onboard life support system. Liara was seriously injured, but stable. Tracer was still unaccounted for.

And the Compact crew that had gotten the surviving colonists there was assembled in a respectfully silent semicircle around Valena and Wrex. The Asari was being tended to by Anika; she had neglected her own safety to keep the Krogan alive through a veritable meat grinder of railgun rounds and laser bolts, and paid for it, but it had been worth the price. The ancient Urdnot had torn into the Geth like one of the ferocious monsters of his native Tuchanka, blasting them to pieces with his massive shotgun, smashing them into the walls or tossing them over the bridge by using biotics, or simply headbutting them and tearing them apart with his bare hands. He was covered in wounds and scorched with burns all over, but Krogan toughness was no idle talk.

Astrid joined them, Jacqueline, Reyes, Garrus and Lacroix in tow, and the first thing she did was to greet the Krogan. "You made us all look like amateurs."

Wrex laughed. "You're disrespecting your commander, here." Then he grew more serious. "If you hadn't gotten me close enough I couldn't have helped."

Ziegler stood up. "She's a mess, but she'll be up on her feet again. In a week, perhaps."

"It's unbelievable, what she pulled through", Lawson commended her quietly.

"That's a veteran Asari commando for you", the Krogan acknowledged her. "They die standing."

"Colonel, we still have a couple of halls to clear, but we're mostly done here", Brulirea informed. "I should add, it is awfully easy. They're screwing up so badly a rookie on her second day in boot camp would be pissed."

Tali nodded. "Geth intelligence is an emergent behavior. The more of them there are around, the smarter they get."

Jacqueline smirked. "Then we got 'em."

"And we're no closer to knowing what Saren wanted with this place", the Starwatch colonel growled. "Shilu! You girls see if you can scavenge something useful from these piles of junk. We need to know what they were doing here or all of this was a waste."

"We got that answer for you!" Lumiscant announced. "There's a shuttle here!"

"What?"

The craft was definitely alien looking, almost insectoid in appearance, and only slightly smaller than the chamber where it sat. The Quarians were enthralled by it. "First time I've seen this model", Jaenna commented distantly.

Garrus Vakarian circled around the shuttle. "It looks Geth, but…" He turned towards Tali. "Correct me if I'm wrong here, but they don't put together troop transports this small."

The girl shook her head. "No, not that I know of. They assembled this for someone."

"Saren?" Astrid asked out loud.

"Maybe, but I don't think so. If he was here we'd have seen a lot more muscle around", the Turian posited.

The colonists were troubled. "We never saw anything like it", the bulky woman with Latin features said.

Aaliyah eyed her and noted thinly: "You don't look like you're in pain anymore."

The woman returned the look, and chose her words carefully: the soldier looked like she was itching for an excuse to tear off someone's head. "You're right… we walked in here, and the pain was gone. I don't know why."

"Want to guess?" Reyes said sarcastically. "Whatever's pulling your strings wanted us to see this."

"Find out why", Garrus told the Quarians. "Tear it apart if you have to. But get us answers."

Shepard took Symmetra aside. "If you know something about this that we don't and we find out later…"

The Vishkar engineer looked at her for a long second, then she put her hands to her helmet and removed it. Brown eyes returned her merciless stare. "Colonel Shepard, I… I am sorry. I know this… incident has cost you and your men greatly." In a lower voice, she added: "I was not a close acquaintance of Tracer's, but I'm… I'm also worried about her."

Genji had kept mostly to himself so far, but now had choice words for her: "Hope that your misplaced loyalties don't result in Lena being lost to us forever." Or there will be hell to pay.

"Coronel, encontré algo", Sombra informed. "I'm starting to get distress signals, but they're erratic. They shift locations at random, and last for random lengths of time too, never longer than half a millisecond. But it happens all around the exit to the skyway. Seems like critical chronal accelerator damage to me."

"You left no stone unturned, didn't you", Shimada muttered. He felt angry. That last tidbit had told him that Sombra had read every Starwatch file there was, including information critical for Tracer's security —and because of that, highly classified, and restricted only to the top brass and those she frequently deployed with—.

"That's for later", Shepard said dryly, agreeing with Genji but worried about the present moment. "Now I need answers. Someone remind me the protocol and tell me how do we help her."

"We have emergency equipment aboard the Redoubtable for this contingency", Mercy informed, "but if it fails to work, we have to bring in more complex machinery from Numbani."

"We'll cross that bridge when we reach it", Astrid replied. "Brulirea, get a detachment to secure the area and prepare the zone to deploy that gear."

"Yes ma'am."

"Shimada, you go with her. You know what to do."

A nod. " _Ryōkai_."

It was not long before the Quarians found something. "This ship was given to an Asari commando, one of Benezia's retainers, on Saren's orders", Shilu'Vael informed. "One Shiala Iessiros."

Symmetra was impassive. "If she's been around, then she's been extremely discrete. No members of any Citadel species ever visited the colony since I took charge."

"Maybe she was given Geth cloaking tech", Garrus hazarded. "Nothing we got picked up those stalkers."

"This shuttle has been here for a while, so we have to suppose Garrus' guess is correct", Jaenna continued.

"Before the Geth came?"

"Yes", she answered Vakarian's question. "Forty-one days."

"That's a long time to wait for news before acting", Reyes commented.

"What do you mean?" the Turian inquired.

"Blackwatch infiltration assignments were a nightmare, and my agents knew that when the shit hit the fan they'd be on their own. But we still put together plans for emergency extractions each time, even if that meant they had to take ridiculous chances."

"I can imagine why, but still I want to hear it." Shepard was keen to keep Gabriel talking. Her information on Blackwatch was slim at best and Reyes' sudden openness was a glimpse into that world.

"A lot of the time we were digging for dirt on people who supposedly supported Overwatch against the omnics", he replied, "so we could not afford being exposed. So we— _I_ turned to the underworld. Thieves, spies, smugglers, assassins—they got our people out, they would be off the hook."

Wrex looked at him approvingly. "No wonder your crew was so loyal to you."

Anika had a fey look in her eyes. "You surely stepped on some toes by doing that."

Shepard wanted to agree with the Krogan. "And those who didn't make it…"

The man gave her an icy glare. "Why do you think I wanted recognition for them? You have any idea how many fat cats got scared shitless when they realized we knew about their backstabbing?"

So that's why all that shit is still locked up tight. "Let me guess. You got compromised in one of those dealings."

A grim laugh. "That's what they wished." Then his smirk vanished. "You can deal with the worst scum if you show them what happens when someone tries to fuck you over. I would know. I didn't call myself Reaper."

A few omnics then came in, hauling part of a destroyed Colossus. They got a few odd looks, but as the Quarians hopped down from the shuttle and started to dismantle it, the Compact agents realized they had brought it there at their behest. They worked quietly for a few minutes, with Shilu occasionally muttering to herself as she hovered her omni-tool over parts of the wreck —most likely talking to the Agleia AI and unaware of it—.

Then Shilu stood up. "This thing's mostly fried, but there's this. Saren dropped the Geth here to hunt something down and destroy it."

"Something?"

"That's the thing", she said simply. "They didn't know."

Wrex laughed. "That is a first. Neither us nor our enemy know what we're doing. Good thing to be even for once."

"They had some clues", Jaenna said dryly. "They knew of the spores, and were searching for their source. Their interest on the colony was secondary."

"Do they know what happened to Saren's goon?" Garrus asked.

"They got some data from her, but it was insufficient", Tali answered. "And that's all we know. Like Shilu'Vael said, this thing is fried."

"If anything… without her AI, we wouldn't have gotten this much", the elder Quarian admitted reluctantly.

A message rang on Shepard's earbuds: "Coronel, she's here."

A single glowing point marked the location on the map. "That's… under the colony", she breathed. It was below the main settlement. Several stories below surface level.

"The signal is stable now?" Anika asked on the spot.

"Sí, doctora Ziegler. It stopped moving."

"That's underneath the dig site", Symmetra noted.

"My first hunch was to go there… How do we get that deep?" Aaliyah asked out loud, then her eyes met Jacqueline's: "Actually, forget I said anything."

* * *

The dig site was close to ground level. Chambers here were stuffy and dark, with little light coming in; civilian omnic frames and industrial machinery were stocked on the nearby floors.

"So, basically, we continue where you left off", Garrus asked Symmetra.

The Vishkar engineer bowed her head. She had again donned her helmet. "Yes." She wove a small droid out of hardlight and a seed-like pod she had fished from a satchel, and the tiny flying robot marked the way down to the chambers where Tracer's signal was.

"Jacqueline? Time to do your grace", Astrid said.

"You got it." Her whole body went ablaze with blindingly blue-white light, that then coalesced around her in a protective bubble as she focused her powers. Cleaning up debris was much easier than crushing Geth, but the technique was the same — grab a lump and compress it using increased gravity to reduce it to a much more manageable size. Miranda also helped, being more skilled than Subject Zero, but several tiers below her in raw strength. In such fashion, ten minutes of work cleared a way for them through two rooms.

As they had done twice before already, Reyes went in first through the newly cleared doorway while the rest of the squad waited tensely, weapons at the ready. A few seconds went by in this fashion.

Finally, the signal came: "Clear." But then he added: "Bring in the doc and Symmetra. They should see this."

A corner of the chamber was relatively clear of debris. The walls there were covered with vein-like growths of a brown, chitinous material.

Both the engineer and the medic analyzed it. "We're onto something here, people", Anika said. "This is spewing spores like crazy."

"It seems to be some kind of plant or fungus", Symmetra added.

Garrus snorted. "I don't know what you've seen, but where I come from, those things look a little different."

"Let's press on", Shepard said curtly.

The chitinous growths became only more and more abundant as they cleared more rooms.

"Let me guess", Reyes asked. "You had delays and workers calling in sick whenever you wanted to continue clearing the debris."

"Quite so", Symmetra agreed half-heartedly. Then she added, with a tired voice that let others see just how exhausted she actually was: "Normally, I would be beyond incensed at how careless we are being. Every piece of debris removed would be broken down and analyzed. But now…"

Shepard only said one word: "Priorities."

They had to clear two whole floors before reaching relatively clean chambers, but now the chitinous growths were everywhere: walls, floor, ceiling. They even came upon some fleshy balloon-like pods that would swell up and violently spew out clouds of yellowish-green dust. It was a profoundly disturbing sight for everyone, and no one wanted to comment on it.

On a corridor filled with such pods they made a discovery: "Doc, over here."

Anika approached Reyes. He was hunched over the desiccated remains of a corpse.

"What was it?" she wondered. "It doesn't match the anatomy of any species I know of."

Symmetra's left hand hovered over the husk as her omni-tool analyzed it. "Whatever it was, according to isotope traces, it perished by the time the Protheans vanished."

" _Hay otro aquí_ ", Sombra announced. "It's not the only one."

"And another here", Wrex pointed out.

A deeper inspection revealed that, in all likelihood, over thirty beings had died in that grisly corridor, judging mostly from what was left of their outfits. "They all seemed to wear some kind of biomechanical suit", Ziegler posited. "I can only wonder what did they use it for."

"I am beginning to think it is no coincidence that Tracer's signal stabilized here", Genji said quietly.

Some ten minutes later of dread-filled exploring, and then Reyes informed: "I found her, but… come here."

The chamber was huge, almost three stories high, everything covered in brown chitin. In the middle, hanging from fleshy sprouts and tendrils reaching for the walls, floated a huge, bulbous shape, easily as big as their dropship, that expanded and contracted in a slow, ponderous and profoundly disturbing breathing rhythm.

And, right below it, two unconscious bodies lay. Tracer, and an unclothed Asari they did not recognize.

Anika darted at once towards them—or tried to: "Wait!" Shepard ordered imperiously.

"But Tracer—!"

"I know, but wait!" she repeated roughly.

"Someone has already taken care of her", Shimada noticed. A fresh bandage covered most of her exposed belly. Her chronal accelerator, broken and useless, lay next to her.

"Correct me if I'm wrong", Miranda said quietly, "but this is the first green Asari I see."

Wrex bowed his head. "Yeah, me too. Maybe the thing did something funny to her."

Jacqueline would have snorted at that if the whole place and situation did not thoroughly spook her. "That didn't… didn't come off right."

Garrus' voice was almost inaudible: "There is something attached to her. Look at her neck."

Vakarian had just spoken when the tendrils reaching for the Asari's head detached, and the feminine alien opened her eyes. She turned her face to meet the newcomers, and slowly stood up.

"My host welcomes—you. It would like you to know that your—friend is badly injured but not in—any peril", she said, but there was something off about her words: she was accenting the wrong vowels, and the pauses were occasionally an instant too long.

"Explain yourself", the Turian said coolly. His rifle was pointed downwards, but his finger was on the trigger. "Who are you? And who is this 'host' you're talking about?"

"My name is Shiala—Iessiros. I am a commando from the Lessus hunter—cadres, currently in the service—of Matriarch Benezia. As to my host…" The Asari turned around and gestured at the huge fleshy blob behind her.

"Your 'host' recklessly treating Alliance citizens has gotten some of them killed and almost cost us several members of my team", Shepard said stonily. "We're not in the most receptive of moods here."

The Asari held her angry glare. "Your citizens earned themselves that—fate when they invaded my host's home. Even so, attempts were—made to accommodate to the situation and attain a peaceful—coexistence."

"In the same way you did with your guests in the back room?" Sombra said scathingly.

"My host is very old. Many species—came and tried to settle this planet. It remembers them—all. Some of them it suborned to tend to its needs. Some of them it—silenced to protect itself."

After a moment's hesitation, Anika asked: "How old?"

A condescending smile flashed on Shiala's face. "It is far older than any—of our species. What is the use of that information to you?"

"We'll judge that ourselves", Shepard said dryly. "So you 'silenced' the colonists to stop them from reporting you?"

The smile vanished. "My host values—its privacy. When intruders invade, poke—at it, savage its growths and try to—control or destroy it, it has to protect itself." After a brief pause, Shiala added: "The galaxy is a big enough place. This—planet is a big enough place. But when others come they don't—content themselves with sharing."

'Shiala's' words reminded Shepard of the tales of slavery, carnage and horror wrought against the natives of pretty much every land mass by European hands after the Renaissance — tales that had inspired the ruthlessly stringent rules the Alliance had put into place to govern the settlement of alien worlds. But, as it was the case with every rule, those with enough clout could flout, break or outright ignore them. Vishkar's dealings with their colonists were proof of that.

"If 'sharing' means that your 'host' murders its neighbors when they don't follow its whims, then don't be surprised when they try to fight back." Shepard sent a mental command to open a radio channel to the Redoubtable—or tried to: her onboard AI returned a 'no signal' warning.

"You were needed here", the Asari thrall replied. "The—Geth came with orders to find my host and—destroy it. They are beyond it to suborn or silence. If you managed—to remove your colonists from its sphere of influence, you would—have left the planet and deprived my host of the—helpers it needs. It could not be allowed to happen. A sacrifice had to be made."

"Fuck you and your 'helpers'", Shepard snarled. "You claim to want peaceful coexistence? You don't mind rape or enslave your neighbors. And you fucking don't murder them to get a point across either. And what the hell did you do to Tracer here? Have you 'suborned' her too?" she growled.

"My host—rescued your agent. It also has access to biotic—skills and is capable of feats you haven't even dreamed of yet."

"I imagine that 'rescue' comes with strings attached", was Garrus' icy comment.

'Shiala' shook her head. "Your friend is—safe. Whatever spores she has inhaled you can—cleanse. We only ask that you let us be."

Aaliyah kept her icy glare on the Asari. "Let you do with this colony as you want. Sure thing. Will there be anything else?"

"The Geth will come again, you have to know that", Garrus objected. "If they don't already know, then they'll eventually realize that their raid has failed. In case your thrall here didn't let you in on the fact, they were after you."

The Asari thrall turned around, gesturing at the tendrils and growths sprouting from the fleshy mass and reaching for the walls, roof and ground. "My host's roots here run deep. It has—weathered catastrophes that have cleansed the galaxy—of life. With some preparation, it will—also weather the coming storm."

A slight reminder of her laser wound came back now to torment her, also a reminder of how Liara had been very nearly killed, of how Tracer had almost been lost to them, and of how Amari was fighting for her life back in their shuttle.

 _I've had enough of this rock. Fuck Saren, fuck Vishkar, fuck Symmetra._

 _And fuck you too._

She signaled Jacqueline and Miranda before her voice came off, low and cruel. "No you won't." She turned towards the Talon crew. "Reyes. Sombra."

Her once nemesis addressed her with a heartfelt: "What are your orders, ma'am?"

"I want you to sterilize this place. Find every trace of this thing, everywhere in this tower, and kill it. In that fashion of yours."

The Asari turned around faster than a striking viper: "What? What are you—doing?!" she hissed. "You are going to throw away—your friend's life? So easily?"

The Starwatch colonel was impassive. Tracer would curse her name if she learned that she had traded a colony for her life. She knew it, and every member of her team knew it. "We won't be blackmailed."

"If fighting breaks out you—won't leave this place."

"Neither will you." Shepard stood her ground. "We die here, and this colony will be quarantined. When they find out what happened here —and they will— they'll glass this planet. Maybe you can survive this, maybe not. But the Geth will come back after that happens and we won't be here to stop them."

Her argument, however, had a fatal flaw: that outcome played right into Saren's hands. But she was gambling on the survival instinct of this thing prevailing.

"You are after—Saren, aren't you? We know why he sent the Geth—here. If fighting breaks out you will never—know."

Wrex defused the situation with a rumbling chuckle. "So both sides have something the other wants, but neither trusts the other enough to make a deal. Nothing ever changes."

Garrus smirked. "Good one, old man."

Aaliyah took a deep breath. "We won't leave our colonists to your devices, and we aren't abandoning this planet either", she said slowly and clearly. "And as long as Saren knows of your presence here, if he wants you destroyed he will stop at nothing to achieve it. Would it be possible to resettle you to another world?"

The pulsing, fleshy mass behind the unclothed Shiala heaved and contracted noticeably. Seconds ticked by in silence.

"That would—be difficult, but it could be done", the Asari thrall said at last. "If you can secure—passage for my host to another planet and rehome it there in—secret, it would get it done."

After a moment, Anika spoke out loud: "So it seems we have the beginning of an agreement?"

'Shiala' bowed her head. "Yes."

Shepard scowled and nodded reluctantly. "I don't like this, but it's a deal."

The green-skinned Asari smiled. "Wonderful." Then she added: "Normally I would advise to—wait until we were safely on our way, but my host believes this information is—of the utmost importance to you. So it wants you to—consider this a gesture of goodwill.

"Saren has access to Prothean information, but—he cannot read it. They stored their information in—patterns that require a mindset—and point of view unique of a Prothean. Only someone who has experienced their culture can think—in such patterns. Without it, one of their—messages is only a jumble of images and sensations that make little sense—if at all. It would be like—trying to explain sounds to a creature with—no ears."

Everyone looked at Shepard. What the thing was describing through its Asari thrall was too similar to what she had experienced after direct contact with the Prothean monolith on Elysium to be a coincidence.

"If you're telling me this", she said slowly, "it can only mean that you have somehow access to the means of unlocking this information."

"That is correct", the green-skinned Asari nodded. "My host—is willing to share this with you—and a vast wealth of experiences and recollections it has gathered—if only you will trust it."

"We have a deal already", Garrus pointed out. "What other trust does it require?"

'Shiala' smiled again. "I trust you are—acquainted with Asari melding?"

 _Oh, shit. Here we go again._ Aaliyah breathed deeply again. "Yeah."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ screw the 3-week schedule. It's done when it's done from now on. I had nothing solid by that time so I kept working on until I liked what I got.

A piece of trivia for you. I wrote the tidbit where Reyes talks about Blackwatch about a week before the Retribution comic was released. (Guess Overwatch canon is just _that_ predictable.)

 **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** gave much valued input, without which this would have turned out much worse.


	38. Citadel: Eye of the Tiger

The _Redoubtable_

The first thing that Aaliyah saw when she opened her eyelids again was the eerily blue-skinned face of Amélie Lacroix. The yellow eyes scrutinized her — blankly, it took her a long moment to realize, as opposed to the clinical coldness she had learned to expect from her.

" _Mon colonel_ ", she said quietly.

"Lacroix… why… what are you doing here?" She sat up on her bed painstakingly and noticed she was in the medbay of her ship.

The answer surprised her: "I was worried about you."

She blinked twice, her efforts to hide her astonishment hampered by the numbness that comes with an awakening after a long sleep.

The woman —still an assassin, but now a little bit more of a _concerned person_ — frowned slightly. " _Qu'est-ce que c'est?_ "

"No, nothing, nothing, just…" For a moment she considered telling her she had been surprised by the bit of humanity she had glimpsed in her, but remembered their talk on the mess hall before their deployment on Feros and thought better of it. So instead she simply said, "I'm sorry, Lacroix."

The sniper saw what had gone through her mind. " _Merci_ ", she said. _I understand._ "Everyone wanted to know what is it that you saw."

The door slid open then and Anika walked in: "Colonel! Are you alright?"

"Yeah, if only a bit… uh, fuzzy-headed." Amélie's comment had flipped a switch on her, everything the melding with Shiala had revealed rushing like a torrent into her mind. "How long was I out?"

"Six hours."

She took that with a grumble. "No time for playing Sleeping Beauty here." She hopped off her bed and looked at the others. Liara, Valena and Tracer were fast asleep. "How are they?"

"Nothing that can't be fixed", Anika reassured her, and went on to relate everyone's conditions: multiple laser wounds for both Asari, and concussions consistent with a close-range detonation for Tracer. It sounded bad, but then again, Ziegler had said she could treat them all.

She let out a brief sigh. "If you can fix it, I'll try not to worry." She left the room and made her way to the mess hall followed by the medic and Widowmaker. A good deal of the crew was there: Reyes, Genji, Wrex, Park—

"Symmetra?" Her eyes hardened. "What are you doing here?"

The brown-skinned engineer could not hold her gaze. "Vishkar ordered me to conceal everything about their experiments and studies in Feros. I refused. They have declared me in breach of contract and filed a lawsuit to muzzle me." Again she tried to look at Shepard, and still she could not. "I've asked the Compact for protection. I am willing to put all my knowledge and skills at your disposal in exchange."

Next to her, Martinsson saluted. "Evenin', ma'am. I told her it was okay, supposing you agreed."

Slowly she assented with her head, wishing she could consult with Tracer. She looked instead at Reyes and his hacker colleague. Sombra's eyes twinkled but she made no gestures, and she did not know what to make of it, other than that she should talk to her later.

Which she was going to do nonetheless. Again the hacker had proved herself very useful, and she could not keep turning a blind eye to her agenda, whatever it was.

"You're on probation", she ruled in a tone that left no room for negotiation. "You screw up or complain or even look at me funny and you're on your own. Clear?"

The engineer bowed her acquiescence. "It will be as you say, colonel."

"It better be." She sat on her usual spot. Astrid handed her a cup of hot tea. "Thanks, X. Where are we going?"

"Back to Erinyes, colonel", Stella replied.

"Good." She took a deep breath, and everyone looked at her intently. "Now I know why the Reapers are after the Citadel. It is a dormant relay. When activated, it will open a direct way to the heart of the galaxy from dark space, where they lay waiting."

Her crew took the news soberly. "The whole thing is a trap", Garrus said as his wheels turned and the horror unfolded in his mind. "The collected leadership of the galaxy is there. If they arrived there they could immediately decapitate the government…"

"And no one found about it until now?" Ziegler asked in surprise.

"Bear in mind that we didn't build it", Vakarian reminded them. "The Asari found it and settled it, then the Salarians joined them. We Turians arrived much later. Even if it's the heart of civilization as we know it, there's so much about it that we still don't know. Where's its power core, or the master control unit. Hell, we don't even know what is it made of."

"And they went and housed the seat of the government there." The mercilessly flat delivery made Miranda's sharp quip that more piercing.

" _Cuanto más inteligente, más grave el error_ ", Sombra commented, causing Reyes to snort. It was very real: the smarter the people, the worse and more damaging the mistake.

Vakarian also snorted. "Yeah, that's a real problem for us. If someone you promoted turns out to be incompetent, it's your fault as much as theirs. So usually talent tends to rise to the top."

The former Blackwatch commander rubbed his chin. "So when they fuck up…"

"What else was there?" Amari asked. The lower half of her prosthetic body was missing, and she had been temporarily outfitted with an anti-gravity device that allowed her to hover around in the same fashion of Zenyatta.

Shepard took her time to answer. "The gateway can only be opened from our side. Supposing Saren is their gatekeeper, he needs access to the Citadel. And here's what I don't understand. He could have done it without going so far as to get himself burned. Why instigate the Elysium incident at all?" She shook her head slowly. "I'm running in circles around this one."

Tali'Zorah raised a hand. "Maybe he doesn't have the information you got from the Prothean relic?"

"Why not take me then?" Aaliyah asked in response. "He had Asari on his payroll, any one of them could have gotten inside my head. Why destroy the monolith? Why let me live at all? He could have butchered the colony down to the last human and omnic and no one could have stopped him."

"If he needs the information on the monolith, you got exposed to it before he had the chance, and he destroyed the monolith", Miranda reasoned, "then I believe he didn't kill you or take you because the only way he can get what you saw is by observing your actions."

"That does not explain why he lured us to Cyone", Astrid objected.

"On the contrary, it does", Genji supported Lawson. "That gambit gave him a measure of how elaborate a deception he has to weave in order to steer us in the direction he requires. And it most likely gave him time to advance his research about the Rachni, of which we have yet to see anything."

Shepard was not convinced. "The idea has merit, but I'm not sold. We're still missing something here." A sigh. "So let's wait and see what Benezia left for us. In the meantime, we have a bargain to honor with the creature of Feros."

There was a brief lull before Amari insisted: "That was all there was, ma'am?"

The question earned Layali some looks, but her superior did not blame her. After all, Shiala's 'host' had promised to share knowledge it had gathered over the course of thousands of years.

"The Protheans were fighting their own war against a synthetic civilization when the Reapers struck." Eyes turned towards Brulirea and Lumiscant, but she put a stop to that immediately: "This civilization was hostile to organic life ever since their first encounter. Our omnics have already evolved past that. So no funny looks, people."

Wrex did the Krogan equivalent of a frown. "Try convincing the Council of that."

"I agree", Garrus said with surprising reluctance. Then he added, again surprising everyone, "I've been wary of even the stupidest VI all my life, and… you know, if it's an act, it's beyond good. A part of me still believes you're biding your time", he admitted, looking at both omnics, "but it's getting harder by the day to keep that mindset. I guess I owe you an apology."

The reply came from Agleia, Shilu'Vael's AI. "If only more of your kind were that flexible."

"Oh, we are", Vakarian replied. "We're not easy to sway with words, but when confronted with raw evidence we can change our minds."

Shepard continued: "Also… the creature is old. Much older than the Protheans themselves were. It wasn't lying when it claimed to have survived multiple galactic cataclysms. It never left Feros, but it learned about what was going on from sentients it… infected or _assimilated._ At the very least, it saw the Reapers wreck everything fourteen times." She took a deep breath. "Excuse me if I'm not more forthcoming. I didn't just get intel relevant to our mission. In all seriousness… I guess I should sit down with a team of archaeologists and historians for a year. Or two." A bitter smile. "It wasn't lying either when it claimed to have knowledge on biotics that would put Benezia to shame. Funny thing is, I can't do shit with it. Maybe our girls can, once they wake up."

* * *

Reyes had told Aaliyah what their meeting with Sombra on the Cerberus base had been like, so she had expected a similar scene of removed panels and exposed wiring when she walked into the quarters the hacker had been assigned on her ship.

It was, however, not the case, at least not at first glance. The 'Asari' simply sat on her bunk, totally motionless, her eyes dreamy.

"Are you done?" she asked.

" _Un momento, coronel._ " After a few seconds, 'Silthea' blinked twice, then stood up. "There, all done now. What is it that you wanted?"

Shepard leaned against a wall. "To talk. I'm running all over the galaxy and going on missions with you when I hardly know what's it that you want."

Sombra smirked. "It took you long enough."

Aaliyah scowled. "Yeah. Reckless of me not to do it earlier." She glared at the hacker. "So start talking."

The 'Asari' stood up and paced around the small cabin. "That girl, Tali'Zorah, asked something like that and made some really good points. Really?" Again a smirk, though not as smug as she had seen from her. "There are only two things you can get me that I can't just take."

"And they are…"

" _Primero: conexiones_. Everyone here has contacts and sources in the highest places. And people in high places take more precautions. They commit the important details to memory, never to a computer system or a VI. Those I can hack. Memory, on the other hand…"

Shepard grimaced. "If you can't hack memories and you're here for the connections, I guess I don't want to know how you're exploiting those connections."

Sombra returned her gaze with all seriousness now. "If you knew you would be all uptight about it. I've been doing it since the moment I got on the Compact. And it's worked out for you."

She was right on all counts, of course. And Shepard was getting already worked up indeed. She tried to lock that concern away but she could not: "And what else is it that you do with all the data you're mining here?"

"Business and insurance. You don't get to be an old hacker without either."

 _I'd better stop. Right now._ "Alright, fine, let's let that one rest for the moment. The second thing?"

'Silthea' sat back on the bunk bed. "Believe it or not, security."

Aaliyah did all the math in her head. She had not even heard about Sombra before Reyes had first mentioned her. But if even she needed protection then there had to be someone who knew about her and did not care just how much dirt she could have on anyone. Or, more dangerously, that someone knew but judged getting her out of the way was worth the sacrifice.

And there were only so many parties with the power and leverage to act like that towards her. The Citadel? To her knowledge, they knew of Silthea as a mercenary attached to the Starwatch crew. Which meant it was quite likely that someone else knew of her presence there. And if that someone also knew of her true identity… her judgment warned her that those were too many leaps of logic, but her gut told her she was on the right track…

"Let me guess. The Shadow Broker."

The 'Asari' blinked. " _Excelente, coronel._ You're getting sharper."

Shepard crossed her arms and legs. "You know that we struck a bargain with this guy. He's feeding us data from time to time."

Now it was Sombra's turn to scowl. " _Sí, ya lo sé._ I also know it won't last. When he learns that I'm running with you he'll offer you everything you want in exchange for me."

"Why?"

"Because we're competitors. Before I came around he had the information brokerage business cornered. Now enough people rely on me that he has to actively negotiate his fees. And that's pissed him off."

Shepard nodded, thinking. "I can't say whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that the Compact could be associated with an underworld syndicate rivaling the Shadow Broker's."

Smugness reappeared on the hacker's face. "Underground syndicate? There's no 'underground syndicate'. Only me." She made a dismissive gesture. "Don't think about it too hard, _coronel._ You'd go mad trying to wrap your brain around it if I explained it to you."

Aaliyah narrowed her eyes before speaking: "You know what… before Feros, I told the Spectres that I had to trust you because every breakthrough we got was thanks to intel you provided. Even if you were a Talon spymaster and all. Since so far I'm always reacting to your data, someone could argue I've been doing what you want." Her voice was now cool, neither friendly or unfriendly. "You're not human anymore, yet you got human concerns and goals. I don't have the time to try and figure you out completely, but I don't believe for a moment that protection and connections are enough of a trade for the intel you can get us."

Sombra snorted: " _Por supuesto que no._ I charge a lot more for what you get. But I like you, _coronel._ I like what you're trying to do. And Reyes respects you. Considering how many times he's blown it and the history between you two… if he trusts you, so do I." She narrowed her eyes: "Actually… the price may end up being just right. The 'protection' part could become a problem."

* * *

"Colonel?"

"Yes, Miranda, come in."

The cabin door slid sideways. Lawson walked in. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything."

"Nothing important. I'm just done with our after action report, I was going over everything to see if I missed anything." She stood up and stretched, then looked at the woman. "What is it that you wanted?"

Miranda glanced at a chair, then at her; Shepard bowed her head and watched her sit, already half-guessing what that was about. Her gut feeling was confirmed when she noticed the girl was trying to find the right words.

Her voice, however, came out as steady as usual: "You remember what we unearthed about me back in Pragia." She got a nod in response, and continued: "I interrogated doctor Archer and the surviving staff from the facility, then put out some feelers to try and track down my… sister. Nothing that leads back to the Compact, Shepard, I promise."

Again a nod. Besides the kind of looks a goddess would kill for, Miranda also had a maniac's attention to detail. "Alright. You're building up towards something. Spit it out."

The woman straightened up. "I would like to send the Corsairs on an assignment."

It took Shepard a moment to fish the callsign from her memory. "The rest of the team that you took to Iera. What's the mission?"

"I have a potential location. I want to make sure it's her. Gather up DNA samples, learn about her acquaintances and everyday life, that's it."

The Starwatch colonel gave her an odd look. "I suppose here is where you explain why would you send highly trained ex-Cerberus operatives on a surveillance mission."

"The girl I found is a sophomore of the New Thebes University in Anhur", she said at once. "To my knowledge, Cerberus never had any kind of operations there, and they would never allow such a valuable test subject to slip out of their grasp. So either they've suborned the University, or they have very discreet surveillance in place. In either case, those are very skilled assets and they're currently idle. I vouch for them."

Shepard tilted her head slightly. "But if it's a Cerberus op, I wouldn't send the Corsairs in. They'd risk being recognized. Hell, if it was me in command of the OpFor, I'd see it as your play outright."

The brunette woman nodded to concede the point. "I know, but those are risks I'm willing to take. I don't want to distract any Compact personnel, and I'm not deluding myself on my chances of being granted any other kind of requisition."

Aaliyah still was not convinced. "I'm not a bitch. If you make a good case I can get you men." She narrowed her eyes. "There's something else here. Why them?"

Miranda returned her glare with a poker face. "I want the Corsairs reinstated. They're not prisoners anymore but they're not getting assignments either. And they're good troops. They don't deserve being sidelined."

A slight frown. "Alright, that's wise. If you want to find them good work, I'll look into it. But it doesn't need to be this mission."

"If Cerberus does have a strike team in reserve to back up their watchers, things could get ugly. The Corsairs trained with their best. They know what they're capable of."

Aaliyah still had doubts, but she saw that Miranda was not going to back down. Reluctantly she agreed. "You've given it a lot more thought that I can do in a few minutes. I'll put up the request." She dwelt upon it for a few instants, then asked: "What do you intend to do if you confirm it's her?"

"I'll have her extracted."

"Are you sure?" Shepard asked piercingly. "She's a sophomore. New Thebes is an academic capital in a garden world. What if she's not a lab experiment but just a girl who doesn't know she's being watched? What if she's got a life? You really want to tear that apart?"

Lawson did not budge. "That's highly unlikely, colonel. You know it."

"Yes, I know. That doesn't mean it's not possible."

Miranda crossed her hands over her lap. "If she has a life… it will very probably be the kind of life I knew. I had everything I wanted, but everyone around me expected so much from me. Each time I achieved something, the goalposts didn't get any closer, they were moved further away." She breathed deeply. "Then I found out why. Awful as it was, it helped me to make some sense out of everything. We didn't have the best of starts, but what you said on the Citadel… I didn't see it coming. I had just expected more orders, not recognition." Unexpectedly she gave her a half-smile. "It was honest praise. I had never gotten any."

Shepard leaned forward on her chair and crossed her hands over her desk in turn. "I… well, I meant it. All of it."

"I know."

Three seconds of silence trickled by. Then Aaliyah spoke. "You think she's better off knowing the truth."

"Yes."

Now it was the Starwatch colonel who took a deep breath. "I'm not sure if I agree, but I'll allow you to go ahead with it. Forward me your operational plan and I'll have the orders sent. I…" A sigh. "I hope you're right and we don't wreck a life in the process."

All the warmth left Miranda's face as it hardened into an unyielding mask. "If a life is about to get wrecked, it will be my father's. I thought he was aloof but he was tracking my progress instead. He always demanded more, saying how I was the Lawsons' legacy. And he's doing it to someone else." Her eyes flashed. "So I'm going to destroy that 'legacy'. I'll put this girl out of his reach, and run his pet eugenics project to the ground. I'll tear everything apart, brick by brick if I have to."

* * *

Urgent messages from both Surrakar and T'Perro spurred them to get to Erinyes as quickly as possible. This time, no one challenged them for clearances or tried to warn them off, but instead they were ordered to hold station near the asteroid base and wait for a shuttle to rendezvous with them. Some minutes later, a small Turian freighter docked with them after requesting permission, and both Spectres came aboard.

"What's the hurry?" Aaliyah asked. "Is it about Benezia's journal? What did you find?"

"That will have to wait. There's news", Surrakar replied curtly. "And they concern you."

Shepard gave the Turian a perplexed look. "What could possibly be more important than hunting down this fucker?"

"Vaswani's employers reached out to their contacts in the Alliance government. An admiral will be in Erinyes for an inspection soon", T'Perro continued after him. "My guess? They'll be looking for dirt on you."

Aaliyah swore. "Just _fucking great._ We're _this_ close and we gotta put up with an inspection because someone got her toes stepped on. Fabulous." In spite of herself, she looked at Reyes and chortled bitterly. "Tell me, you also had to put up with this crap on Blackwatch?"

The man was grim. "Yeah. Then I got sick of it. And everything went down the drain."

The Starwatch colonel got the message. She closed her eyes, took two deep breaths, and tried to distance herself from the situation to assess it coldly. "Any indication of who will be the inspector?"

"Rear Admiral Piotr Mikhailovich Voronin", the Turian Spectre answered. "Graduated with honors from the Baikonur Academy. Commanding officer of the cruiser Volgograd during the Relay 241 incident."

Astrid frowned. "Yeah, I heard about him. It's going to be a problem."

"Why?" Garrus asked.

Aaliyah answered: "He's a conservative. He believes that relations with alien civilizations are useless, not to say dangerous. And he's an honorable man. I never served under his command, but I heard he's a tough boss who demands a lot from his men, merciless with slackers but rewarding those who give their best, even if they fail. He's fought the Batarians for the best part of the last decade."

Reyes stared at Symmetra, arms crossed over his chest. "That was fast. Your bosses must be really scared of you."

The engineer shook her head. "My relationship with the Vishkar board has been increasingly strained. For all of my professional life I've been in their employ, and I've been one of their best performers. So I believed I had the leverage to change some of the less savory practices of the company. I was wrong. Instead, the most obscure and remote assignments would find their way to my desk."

"Why not just fire you instead?" Park asked.

"I know too many secrets." Symmetra looked straight at Shepard. "I recall your warning all too well, yet I should warn you back: if you demand I reveal some of those secrets, I will, but there will be reprisals."

Lacroix commented icily, "And we're seeing some of those right now."

Miranda raised a hand. "Cerberus has interests in Vishkar. Or at least they had them while I worked for them."

"How likely is it that they would have lost them?" Amari asked.

"Considering some of their agents even got seats on the board, not at all", was the reply. "Vishkar has pushed the envelope on areas as diverse as hardlight science and colonization for decades. I don't have all the data to back it up, but I surmise Cerberus in part arranged for Vishkar's ascendancy."

" _Así fue_ ", Sombra confirmed it.

Genji wondered aloud: "Could this be a play to cow our commander into submission?"

Miranda crossed her arms. "I have no doubt I was released so I could be a sleeper agent inside the Compact. If they wanted it, they'd have contacted me."

"Still too many coincidences", Shepard mused. She looked at T'Perro: "Why did you warn me?"

The Asari answered with her characteristic candor, almost rudely so: "I don't like you. Not you, not your kind, not your robot goons. But you helped stop our civilizations from going to war. And, whatever our differences, you produce results, and are an honest friend of the Citadel races. I'm old, but not too old not to change my mind when I'm wrong. I'd rather have you to deal with rather than someone that would have to live up to your legacy."

Reyes smiled. It was not the usual predatory grin. "Now there's a vote of confidence if I've ever seen one."

The comment earned him a sharp look from the Asari Spectre. Shepard bowed her head briefly instead. "I just go with the motions. It's not that I'm tiptoeing around you or anything." She breathed deeply, then asked: "Now tell me what was in Benezia's journal."

Silence gathered instantly as everyone crowded around the Spectres in expectation.

"It's a… well, you humans would call it a 'smoking gun'", Surrakar begun. "She chronicled everything since their first meeting, including how they got the tip on the Elysium monolith. Saren called in favors owed to him by several Hierarchy officers to get the troops he used to attack your colony. I know", he said, reading Shepard's face, "this is valuable but not necessarily useful now, I know. There's more interesting info." He paused and looked at Wrex. "Saren has… recruited ex-members of the Salarian STG to find a cure for the Krogan genophage." The Krogan uttered a surprised grunt, but there was more still: "Benezia also describes two installations in different places on the Terminus worlds: one is a research facility where work is being done on the genophage and the rachni. Another is a shipyard made out of a hollowed out asteroid where a ship is being repaired… another ship like Saren's, one that was buried under Pokhara."

Multiple exclamations of dismay and shock followed. Reyes, however, was low key about it: "So _that's_ what was there."

"Perfect timing", Amari almost snarled.

"Just how did someone like him ever get into the Spectres, to begin with?" Garrus snapped angrily.

"Not one to excuse him", Surrakar said cautiously, "but he may not be in control. Benezia also describes how he gradually descended into madness while at the same time she found it increasingly harder to muster the willpower to keep him in check. And the only constant during this process was how they spent time near this… Reaper."

There was a moment of silence after his last word.

"First time I ever hear you speak of them as Reapers", Lacroix commented.

"There's no denying it anymore", T'Perro admitted reluctantly.

"What was it that Liara said… we should be afraid for the ship we haven't yet seen." Shepard shook her head. "I suppose its buddy will be keeping guard over it while it's being fixed. Not a chance in hell of getting close to it."

"Actually…" Tali'Zorah raised a timid hand. "If Saren's ship was stuck with guard duty, I think Saren himself wouldn't go far. And think of all the plotting he did to distract us. To do what? Sit back and wait until the other ship—the other Reaper has finished repairs? It may be, but…"

"Yeah, I agree", Wrex backed her. "He wouldn't just sit back and wait. He'd be out there doing something."

"I wonder if he had something to do with this", Astrid pondered. "It's the perfect distraction."

"But is the threat of one ship worse than that of a combination of the worst of the Rachni Wars and the Krogan Rebellions?" Vakarian asked out loud.

"Yeah, speaking of which, I want to know what our Krogan have to say about it", T'Perro asked quietly, glaring at Wrex.

The ancient Urdnot stared back with flat, reptilian eyes. "I see where this is going. Saren has promised a cure and brought on board some of the same bunch who made the genophage in the first place. You're afraid he'll succeed, are you." His question was met with at silence. "Guessed as much. So what are you expecting from me? That I'll take part in the destruction of a future for my kind? Or are you going to believe me if I say that in the end we would just trade one yoke for another?"

The Krogan stood straight and alone, dominating the room with his bulk — with no one failing to notice how he was much larger and stronger than anyone present.

Shepard saw that if no one brought the situation under control, at the very least the Urdnot would end up dead. "Wrex", she said quietly, "you said once that your species is killing itself off and it's not learning from its mistakes. I'm not going to be stupid enough to go and ask you to imagine what your kind would do to the galaxy without the genophage to shackle you. Instead, think that this information will be on the hands of the Citadel and Alliance governments in a matter of hours, supposing they don't know already. I don't know about my superiors, but theirs—" she pointed at Vakarian and the Spectres "—will panic. That place won't exist for long now. If we get there first, there will be a chance, an opportunity to salvage something. I understand the choice put before you totally sucks. So trust me when I ask you to let me make it in your stead." She looked into the red, cat-like eyes. "Please."

T'Perro was incensed: "Are your suggesting—?"

"The Alliance will safeguard whatever is salvaged from this site", she said coldly in her best not-negotiating-here voice. "That will give Wrex the trump card he needs to bring his people in line."

Surrakar stood. "Anything that involves a change in the status quo regarding the Krogan is not up for discussion."

"And I'm not discussing here. The Krogan *may* be allowed access to whatever it is that we find there *if and when* they make satisfactory progress on their collective rehabilitation."

Wrex managed to conceal his surprise after seeing that Shepard had chosen to confront the Spectres to protect him, then backed down. "The Alliance is already guaranteeing a fair deal for the Quarians. If they can promise we'll be accorded the same fairness, I can accept your terms."

Astrid looked on. "You think you can sell it to your fellows?"

"Who says I'm going to sell them anything? That's not the Krogan way." To further convey the point, he smashed his fist against his palm.

Reyes chuckled to himself. "I should have met you earlier, old man."

Lacroix commented laconically: "It will be hard."

"You bet that shiny rifle of yours it's gonna be hard. But the Citadel never promised us so much as a shred of a future. If your boss can, as you call it, 'sell' this idea… it will be a start."

Surrakar, T'Perro and Vakarian exchanged looks. Long seconds of silence followed before the Turian Spectre said: "We cannot condone any kind of policy change regarding the Krogan. But… what Urdnot Wrex said is correct. It will do the Citadel no favors that in the future it can be accused of not helping stop a species from exterminating itself. Even if that species is responsible for horror and slaughter the likes of which you Alliance soldiers haven't even imagined yet. To my knowledge, neither humans nor omnics hurled moons at each other."

"Let me suggest a small change in your terms", Garrus proposed. "The Compact will have to be satisfied with the progress made by the Krogan before they're granted a cure, if a cure is what we find in Saren's compound."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ a trip out of country meant I did my writing slower than usual. I hope those who were expecting updates will accept an apology for taking so long.

Again, **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2001** contributed comments and suggestions to keep me going. Thank you so much, guys.


	39. Citadel: Under the scope

The _Redoubtable —_ Erinyes station

The inspection Surrakar had forewarned them about took place two days later. Voronin was a small, stolid man of perfectly Slavic features, steely blue eyes dominating over his wide cheekbones and a mouth of thin lips that seemed to smile little, if at all. He appeared to be in his middle seventies, given his grayish hair.

The inspection team had arrived just as the _Redoubtable_ was finishing preparations for their next mission, and the cavernous hangar bay of the ship was in upheaval, with crews running around to check systems and make sure everything was ready.

The admiral's two aides immediately noticed Jacqueline and Miranda, who, along with their Asari crew, were using their talents to assist with the loading of the heavy supply containers as they were brought in. Voronin himself, while also noting this, looked irritated, and addressed Shepard crisply:

"Colonel? Is this a way to receive an inspection?"

Aaliyah saluted. "Sir, this is the best I could manage. We have a probable location for an installation where Saren is developing his plans, and my Citadel colleagues wanted to leave right away. I had to talk them into waiting for you."

"You don't really expect us to conduct an inspection during an engagement, do you?" one of Voronin's aides asked bitingly. She was a tall, heavyset auburn-haired woman with gnarly hands and an equally gritty face. The tag on her chest read 'CMDR Montaigne'.

Rix transfixed the woman with a piercing glare. "I didn't believe it was necessary to remind you of the stakes here."

The other aide was a male officer with a patch over his left eye socket and burn scars over his forehead and what was visible of his scalp. He was dark-skinned, one captain Cardoso according to his tag. "We are all too aware, agent Rix. And given these stakes we cannot have the performance of our representatives to the Compact called into question. We wish it was not necessary either."

T'Perro approached them. "Sure thing", she sneered. "You can't have your sponsors bitching."

Voronin's own eyes were on Shepard. "So let us waste no time, colonel. Fill us in. Where is this installation?"

* * *

"Garvug?" Wrex snorted as the Compact crew and the inspection team were gathered on the CIC. "He could have picked a warmer place. It's a frozen dump."

"One of your making", T'Perro commented sharply.

The Krogan turned around and his eyes cut through the Asari Spectre. "Yeah, so it is. Now cut the self-righteous act. It's getting old."

"We got word to Jondum Bau thirty-five hours ago", Surrakar informed neutrally. "He's had a team of the Salarian STG dispatched to do some preliminary recon."

"What we know so far about Garvug", Astrid continued after him, "is that it is, as Wrex here put it, a wasteland. And a lawless one at that. It's infested to the brim with gangs of Krogan and Vorcha. The Blood Pack runs wild here, but there's heavy corporate presence too. Vishkar, Lucheng, Binary Helix and Sonax maintain enclaves here."

"Clan Hailot made their home there", Wrex added. "Last I heard, Wrund was the chieftain. He's a canny bastard. He's playing the Pack and the corporations against one another so that they don't intrude in his business."

"Vishkar and Lucheng won terraforming contracts here", Symmetra noted. "The intent is to restore the local biospheres to a point that allows the local population to sustain itself without importing foodstuffs."

"Krogan _wanting_ to fix the mess _they_ made?" Rix snorted. "What's the universe coming to?"

"It could be an opportunity", Garrus thought out loud. "I remember what Wrex said a while ago over the lunch table, how he was trying to make things better. Not that it's likely, but… if he's not the only one about it…"

Wrex let out a rumbling chuckle. "Wrund is probably tired of getting concessions extorted out of him in return for low food prices."

Sombra sat uncomfortably in her Silthea persona by the table. She was fidgety and uneasy. "I didn't hear anything strange coming from Garvug. I'm thinking why. The Krogan aren't really famous for their subtlety, so… either Saren is keeping a really, really low profile… or he has a very loyal base who is obeying him to the letter."

"And what's more likely?" Miranda asked pointedly.

A shrug. "Well, it's… It's hard to say. I mean, both possibilities are just too crazy. Krogan not boasting they'll get a cure? Just as insane as having a dreadnought like that slip unnoticed into a world with so many trigger-happy hired guns standing guard."

Shepard watched Voronin and his aides as the discussion unfolded. The admiral stood silently, arms crossed, just observing, with his aides occasionally whispering to each other. She did not know what to make of it.

"We did pick up Saren's ship on our sensors", she remembered, recalling the message Anderson had sent her from the _Thermopylae._ "But we couldn't figure out what it was. Stella here can correct me if I'm wrong."

"Shepard is correct", the AI answered, "though there is one technicality I should point out." The hologram projector in the center of the CIC fired up to display a schematic of the dreadnought that had destroyed her previous ship. "This vessel did not ambush us. Instead, it came straight at us, ditching off all pretenses of subtlety on the way. My assessment is that it baited us into intercepting it."

"A successful ploy", a newly arriving Tracer said bitterly. She was again on her feet but looking a bit queasy. She looked around, noticed Voronin and his aides, and puzzlement flashed on her face. "I'm sorry, boss. I didn't know we had guests."

"Nothing to forgive", Shepard said, slightly annoyed that she was up and about. "Anika is going to burst a blood vessel. You know it, right?"

Oxton's eyes blazed. "Aw, come on now, boss. I'm tired of being locked up. Besides, I couldn't miss this."

Amari stared at the hologram. "Where could you conceal a ship of that size there?"

"Garvug has high seismic activity, and a series of mountain ranges that crisscross its surface", Stella detailed. "The result is a craggy world with immense canyon systems."

Miranda frowned. "A ship that big surely needs a lot of open ground."

"We can't say. That monster shouldn't be able to land at all", Astrid answered uncomfortably.

"Well, someone didn't get the memo", was Lena's curt quip. _Tell that to Zarya,_ she thought bitterly.

"To summarize", Shepard said with finality, "we have only the most superficial information on the place until Bau's recon squad reports in. Is this correct?"

Heads nodded uneasily around the table.

Then Aaliyah turned to face Voronin. "The only thing we can do to help now is to hasten towards Garvug. You have to decide now, sir", she manifested. "Either you conduct your inspection while we are underway, or you wait for our return here at Erinyes."

* * *

"Admiral, meet our Quarian engineers. Tali'Zorah vas Neema, Jaenna'Gisal and Shilu'Vael." Each one slightly bowed her head in turn. "When they do not deploy with us, they assist here in engineering."

Voronin looked around. "Who is the senior Alliance officer here?"

"There isn't one for this deck, sir. Stella oversees the Quarians' work and assists if needed.

"There should be one", Montaigne said in disapproval.

Shepard shook her head. "To what end? Humans outnumber non-humans by a fair margin on this ship. Stella herself is an AI we provided and is anathema to the Citadel. And if that was not enough, Quarian engineering expertise is priceless. I'll let them speak for themselves."

Shilu'Vael raised a hand nervously. "Um… well, human-omnic technology is incredible, far better than anything we can get our hands on. Except for, um, your propulsion systems."

"Your reactors are very powerful, but waste a lot of energy on inefficient drive designs", Tali'Zorah explained. "At the Migrant Fleet we have to make do with power plants that are decades behind yours, so we have a lot more practical experience than you."

The one-eyed Cardoso frowned. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable trusting aliens with knowledge on our vulnerabilities."

"Then you should withdraw from the Compact", Jaenna'Gisal said dryly. "And in any case, you should already know that the engines of this ship are Turian in origin, so we didn't find anything here that should worry you."

Astrid watched, starting to discern the mechanic at work. Cardoso and Montaigne had most likely been primed to antagonize and provoke Shepard's crew, and so partially insulate their officer from enmity.

"I trust your expertise has proven valuable here?" Voronin asked dispassionately.

"Tali'Zorah and her fellow Quarians have fine-tuned our main drive to produce 27% more thrust and 11% fewer heat emissions, admiral", was Stella's answer.

"And that's bound to improve", Tali said with pride. "The parts we ordered commissioned should be arriving at Erinyes in a standard week."

The admiral took a look around. Clearly the Quarians were at work on something, as there were lots of disassembled machinery and tools lying around, but at a time it seemed that every piece was where it belonged, as if there was a pattern organizing everything, even if he could not figure it out at first glance.

"Not how I'd like it, colonel", he said at last, "though it seems it produces results, if I can believe your AI."

"You can later examine Stella's logs yourself if you have any doubts, sir."

A curt bow of his head, then: "Carry on. What is next?"

* * *

Their next stop was the armory. "Admiral Voronin, welcome, sir", Brulirea the omnic engineer saluted. "I trust you will find this place is being run according to Navy standards."

Indeed, the place was scrupulously tidy. Firearms of all sizes were neatly sorted in racks, Alliance hardlight casters in one, Citadel long rifles in another. Heavy weapons were stashed in foam-lined boxes that fit neatly on armoires in the walls, two such boxes open for their examination — one containing an Aleksandrov-pattern portable particle cannon, another a heavy anti-materiel railgun that was usually a jumpjet trooper's main armament. The four workbenches were equipped with all manner of tools, and two were in use at that time — one by the gnarly Urdnot Wrex, and another by the slender Symmetra. The former Vishkar engineer noticed the newcomers and saluted with a polite nod, but the Krogan simply ignored them and continued working on his Claymore shotgun.

Montaigne looked at the burly alien, wariness tempering her dislike of nonhumans, and asked: "Are aliens issued our weapons as well?"

"It's being considered", Shepard answered neutrally. "But so far everyone fields their own gear. The Spectres outfit themselves and their aides. Wrex here brought along his own cache of firearms when his mercenary squad joined in. My omnic engineers here are fully qualified on the maintenance of our complete inventory, but usually Citadel crews take care of their pieces by themselves."

Cardoso turned to Shilyna T'Perro, who thus far had remained silent and grim-faced: "What does the Citadel have to say about Alliance small arms technology?"

The Spectre scowled. "What could I tell you that you haven't figured out on your own? Your ballistic weapons are crude, they get the job done just out of sheer brute force. But your energy weapons are nothing short of impressive. You're decades ahead of us there."

"I understand the Citadel provided insights on their ballistic technology under the terms of the Compact knowledge sharing clause", Voronin observed.

"Yeah, we did. Amari's new gun there was built marrying your power sources to our linear accelerators. Scary."

"So if that's her new standard issue rifle", Cardoso asked, "what does she use when heavier firepower is required?"

In response, Lumiscant opened an armoire, retrieved a large box, and opened it. "A ferrofluid cannon, sir. A downscaled version of the ship's main guns."

"The coming thing in weapons", Martinsson pointed out. "Lacroix's own sniper rifle is like this, but smaller."

There was a visible reaction on Voronin's face at the mention of the Talon sniper. "Where are the Talon terrorists housed? In the brig?"

"No, sir", Shepard said naturally. "Lacroix and Reyes have accommodations of their own in the crew quarters."

That earned her hard looks from Voronin's aides. "That's irresponsible and reckless to say the—"

"I made my position abundantly clear on the Talon crew when I spoke about it on the Citadel", she interrupted Montaigne harshly. "You are entitled to your opinion but if you did not question my leadership on those grounds then, you have no right to do it now."

"Our opinion is that you are dangerously infatuated with murderers and assassins. What message do you think you send by aiding and abetting the man responsible for killing the men under your command? How do you think others look upon you?"

Shepard did not even flinch at that. "First — that's _colonel_ to you." She transfixed Montaigne with cold eyes. "Second — if that was a concern, then the Joint Chiefs wouldn't have given me this very man for me to use as I saw necessary. He can either rot away in a cell or make restitution for his monstrous crimes. He is doing the latter and helping significantly. I'm not allowing revenge to get in the way of that."

Cardoso and Montaigne glared at the Starwatch colonel in silence. Voronin arched an eyebrow. "Your position on Talon is noted, colonel", he said. "Let's move on."

* * *

The Compact led Voronin's deputation to the hangar next. It was stuffed with Park's hardsuits, the shuttles, and the Bulwarks, which only made the exercise all the more impressive. Genji Shimada and Miranda Lawson were once again squaring off against each other, as they had repeatedly done, but the ninja had learned a lot since his first clash with Samara. His adversary, to her credit, tried different attacks and strived to keep him away, but Genji had picked up on her cues and knew when to duck, when to jump aside, when to trust his barriers to absorb an assault, and when to charge ahead and shorten the distance between him and his opponent. Now they were closely matched, with Miranda able to keep him at bay but unable to take him out for good.

"Why isn't that woman in a lab?" Montaigne exclaimed. "And just how is it that she's a biotic for starters?"

Martinsson answered that. "We have been instructed by Admiral Hackett to hold miss Sutherland into custody and make use of her as we saw fit. Any inquiries should be directed to Hackett's office."

"That doesn't answer my question!" Montaigne insisted.

Shepard spoke then. Her voice took after Reyes', deep to the point of sounding almost guttural: "My lieutenant has answered to the best of her ability. You may be inspecting my ship but you will not abuse my crew."

Voronin paid no heed to the exchange, his cool eyes following instead the Overwatch legend as he fought Lawson. "I expected to see an alien instead of a human."

"Miss Sutherland would be a credible challenge for a huntress", T'Perro said distantly, hating this inspection. "It would take a seasoned master to overcome her."

"Such as yourself?" his other aide said with an edge.

The Asari nodded glacially. "If it was me, Shimada would not stand half a chance. It wouldn't be fair."

Next to Montaigne, Cardoso scowled. "I don't see the point of putting our troops through substandard challenges."

"Trials have to be progressive", another Asari called from behind them. "There is nothing to be gained by trying to defy an opponent that hopelessly outclasses us."

They all turned around. Liara approached them. Shepard had dreaded this moment, but she herself had staged this encounter so it would not appear she was trying to conceal the issue. "Admiral Voronin, this is doctor Liara T'Soni, one of our scientific advisors."

The officer gave the Asari a look, then he stared at Shepard for a second. "I understand some information you provided was obtained in a way not consistent with Navy regulations."

A dozen possible answers flashed through her mind, but this was not a man swayed by excuses. "Why, yes, sir."

"Would you now explain why?"

Shepard blinked, but her surprise was short-lasted. "There was no other way to decode the message from the Elysium beacon, sir. Considering what Saren's dreadnought did to the orbital defenses there, I would do it again."

"And how do you intend to deal with the security risk?"

It was dangerous, but she decided to answer with a question herself: "How do you deal with security risks yourself, sir?"

"It's your performance that's being reviewed, colonel."

"Someone has to be trusted, sir. Surrakar, T'Perro, Rix, Vakarian, Danaan, T'Soni, Wrex — they all have fought and bled side to side with me. Danaan is still on intensive care, and—" she almost said 'Liara', but held herself back "—doctor T'Soni here is recovering herself, as you can see by her bandages. If it's my performance, then it's my choices, and I have judged they merit my trust."

Voronin's face remained inexpressive, his aides not commenting either. They continued to spectate how Genji and Miranda struggled against each other for a while, then the admiral asked, "Who would you spar with?"

"Mistress T'Perro, sir. Actually, to be fair, I don't do sparring per se with her yet. It's more like I'm undergoing instruction with her. Nobody here stands a chance against her." She quickly corrected herself: "Nobody without biotics, that is."

"You're saying only this miss Sutherland can stand up to a Citadel biotic."

"There is one more biotic of our own, sir. You saw her here helping earlier." She tapped her omni-tool: "Jacqueline? Your presence is required on the hangar."

"I'll be there in a minute", the girl replied curtly.

Behind her, Montaigne raised an eyebrow. "Not big on discipline."

Shepard laughed to herself. She held back the impulse to tell this woman to try and educate Subject Zero on proper navy behavior herself, and asked T'Perro instead: "Would you take Jacqueline head on?"

The Spectre scowled, seeing the point her human colleague wanted to make but wounded in her pride. She berated herself for the weakness, squared herself up and answered: "If I had to. But I would rather try to surprise her. Miss Nought is exceptionally dangerous."

"This coming from an ancient Asari Spectre", Shepard stressed. "Jacqueline Nought is a special case. She has to be handled with care."

True to her word, the bald girl appeared on the elevator after less than a minute, Anika Ziegler in attendance. She was wearing only the lower half of the uniform, dressing in a leather jacket and a simple tank top from the waist up. She had newly installed golden metallic grafts behind her ears with ports for instruments to both measure and enhance her talents. "Yeah?" she asked with a slight edge.

"Sorry to interrupt your rehab. This is the inspection team."

The girl gave the three officers a scathing glare. "So, you're the fuckers coming to dig up dirt on us?" Shepard flinched at that, but before she could call her out, the girl continued with her tirade: "Alright, here we are. Go on, ask your questions", she taunted, spreading her arms open wide. "I already figured it doesn't matter what I say, you're going to twist it."

Montaigne was livid, Cardoso speechless. Voronin simply looked back with a strange spark in his eyes. "How old are you?"

"Gonna be eighteen in five months. Why? Worried about child soldiers?" she baited him sneeringly.

The admiral ignored it, focusing instead on the scars all over her arms. "What happened to you?"

"Spent most of my life locked in a torture chamber. Half of the time I was strapped to a chair, while some eggheads took their turns tasing me and pumping me with stuff that got me higher than a comet." She glanced at Shepard. "Then she came around and broke me out."

Ziegler spoke up then: "Miss Nought was purposefully made into a red sand addict. We're trying to wean her off her addiction while keeping the withdrawal symptoms manageable."

Subject Zero snorted. "Yeah. Manageable. Best I slept so far on a single night were five hours, but at least I can sleep now."

Voronin made no gesture. "The colonel and the Spectres say you're a very powerful biotic."

"And you don't believe 'em?" A smile as broad as it was hostile flashed on her lips. "I like the colonel and her bunch. If I didn't you wouldn't be talking to them now. Hell, you wouldn't even have a ship to inspect at all."

"Without her, we couldn't have arrested Benezia", T'Perro said reluctantly. "Miss Nought has only the most superficial training, but also has the kind of raw power matriarchs dream of."

Those who knew about Cerberus were very aware that Voronin was not asking questions about Jacqueline's origins.

"I don't like how this is being handled", the admiral manifested at last. "But managing biotic personnel is not an experience I've had, so I will keep my opinions on the topic to myself."

* * *

"Looks like Voronin was a handful", Anderson's hologram told her several hours later in the privacy of her cabin.

A long-drawn sigh and Shepard stared at the ceiling. "Not him as much as his aides. Really, who the fuck sicced these rednecks on us? Was it just Symmetra's bosses? I don't buy it."

"Well, it was them who got things started, but some people were waiting for someone to give them a reason. People who believe the right answer to Elysium was glassing a Citadel outpost, not cozying up to them."

Aaliyah's eyes flared. "We didn't 'cozy up' to them."

"You and I know it, but that's how they see it", Anderson replied. "And that's the same people who complain of your treatment of Reyes and Lacroix. For the record, Shepard, I don't. I believe you got more out of them than most people could have. But Talon has a lot of blood on its hands. And many died on Elysium. Put those things together — two terrorists who helped instigate a war and seemingly suckered up the very people who should hunt them, and an elite agent of an unfriendly foreign power going on a rampage on a frontier colony… then our own elite working together with said foreign power… And one of our top agents could be accused of affairs with aliens…"

It was either sighing or screaming in rage. Shepard got ahold of herself and let out another long breath. "It's not fucking fair, skipper."

"Hang in there, girl. You're closing in on Saren. We stop his plans and bring him to justice, nobody will dare to attack you."

"Supposing he's there", she muttered. "I refuse to believe he wouldn't plan for Benezia spilling the beans on him."

"I agree. I'm working to get you some help on site. I hope I'll have news for you before you arrive."

Shepard was too tired to ask what kind of help would it be. "Whatever. As long as it's people who can pull their own weight. I got enough on my plate as it is."

Anderson surprised her with a small grin. "Have I ever let you down, colonel?"

She rolled her eyes a bit, then conceded. "Nope, skipper."

"Then trust me here. Now go grab a shower or something. Looks like you could use it."

She thanked Anderson for his concern, cut the link, and closed her eyes. She missed Liara's gentle words and warmth — but seeking her out was the one thing she could not do while the inspection team was onboard.

Despondently she stood and walked out of her cabin. Her steps took her to the hangar, where some of the crew were exercising. Amari stood on the deployable ring, sparring with an omnic drone. Shimada was performing one of the many katas of his art. Jacqueline was practising her biotics, focusing on fine control this time around, Anika Ziegler monitoring her. Amélie Lacroix was also training, using her recoiling grappling hooks to swing between places. Reyes was also there, doing pull-ups, and for once, so was Sombra in keeping of her Silthea disguise.

For all the grief the inspection had caused her, there was one positive side to it. Fareeha's daughter harbored little love for the former Talon agents, but that enmity had been set aside, as the crew had banded together to present a unified front to this challenge. She hardly paid either Widowmaker or Gabriel any heed now.

Her crew made brief pauses to salute her, greetings she returned politely but dismissively — she did not want them to interrupt their training.

"Ma'am?" Anika asked attentively, sensing her restlessness. "How are you?"

"Drop the formalities, Annie. We've been comrades for… what, twenty years now. Twenty years already?" She shook her head.

Ziegler gestured at Jacqueline to continue; the biotic nodded laconically and returned her attention to telekinetically reassembling the piece of machinery she had been given by Brulirea, one part at a time.

"And that has taught me what to look out for in you", she replied with concern.

"Sorry. No more mysteries in me for you to puzzle over."

Ziegler was momentarily put off by the comment, then smiled. "On the contrary. Who knows what's going on inside your head after you interfaced with that monolith?"

Aaliyah groaned. "Yeah, there's that. Fuck that thing. It's been nothing but trouble." Then she added: "But Liara and Shiala have figured that out already."

"The message, perhaps. But the physiological effects? I doubt it."

Shepard saw Ziegler was trying to cheer her up. She gave her a tired smile. "Do I look that beaten up to you?"

Anika entwined her hands over her lap in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, Shepard, I…" Her whole being screamed concern, eyes glittering and brow knotted to complete a near-perfect puppy face.

And Shepard found it insufferable. Especially when it worked. "I hate it when you pull the Puss-in-Boots routine on me."

Genji saw that happen. He finished his kata and commented: "Like mother, like daughter. If anything, picture how good the senior Ziegler was at it while clad on her winged suit."

Anika laughed gaily. "Well, I am her daughter after all."

"Indeed you are", Shimada said wistfully. "It was impossible to say no to her."

"You want to cheer me up, tell me that Tracer and Valena are okay."

"Valena will have to skip the next mission, but Tracer only needs to catch up on sleep. She will be a little stiff, but otherwise ready."

A nod, then after a few seconds she raised her voice: "Everyone, gather round."

Her people heard the command and obeyed, and soon they were all arrayed in a semicircle in front of her, Amélie, Gabriel and "Silthea" standing slightly apart from the rest. She looked into Sombra's eyes first, then shot brief glances at the cameras installed on the hangar roof; the hacker merely gave her half a smirk in response.

"I don't feel like speeches", Aaliyah said frankly. "This whole inspection thing has ticked me off. Anderson believes Symmetra's patrons set something into motion, giving people who don't like us an excuse to attack us. To be honest, I fell into the trap of believing everyone loved us for what we did by staving off a war. I should have known better.

"Hopefully we'll deal Saren's plans a sore blow in Garvug. After that… I don't know. I have an ugly feeling about this. We've been through a lot together. We've had to put up with stuff we didn't like, and with people we didn't like. I hope we've grown stronger from it, because we're going to need it.

"I don't want any lingering hard feelings after this. Lacroix and Reyes have their burdens to bear, and what they did isn't going away anytime soon. But if they again help out, and I believe they will, I hope they will at least have us to call comrades."

She looked at her troopers one by one. Each of them met her look, glanced once at the former Talon agents, and bowed their heads, Amari included.

Then Reyes spoke. "It was like that for me too, all those years back", he admitted. "I also believed everyone would appreciate what we were doing. But dedication by itself has no reward. When that lesson hit me… I couldn't bear it. I snapped." He looked around himself. "And most of you were screwed in some way or another because I was weak." Finally he looked again at Shepard. "Whatever you do, I got your back. But I hope you're stronger than I was."

* * *

 _Author's note:_ A heart-felt thank you to my patient proofreaders, **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009.** They deserve the best for their help.


	40. Citadel: Operation Hard Stream (I)

The _Redoubtable —_ Paz system

Wrex hoisted the big weapon for the first time, holding it as Lumiscant had instructed him. "And you call this heavy?" he snorted. "I could wield it one-handed."

"Don't", the omnic engineer said laconically. "This gun has some tricks you won't be able to do that way. The main trigger—" she pointed at said trigger "—will unleash a plasma torch with a range of six meters. It will melt anything short of a starship-grade heat shield. This other button here will shoot an explosive plasma toroid. You can tune it to work like some light anti-tank ordnance or as an anti-personnel mortar round by flipping this switch, here."

The gnarled Krogan paid close attention to the indications. He grunted his approval. "Looks interesting. How good is it for bashing skulls in?"

Shepard answered that. "Aleksandra Zaryanova used a primitive version of this on the Second Omnic Crisis. She was a terror in close combat."

"And you're willing to entrust it to me." Wrex regarded Aaliyah with flat eyes.

"If I don't, you'll die down there. I can't help but think what's it gonna be like if the Blood Pack and clan Hailot have been both co-opted by Saren — and there'll be an army of Geth to deal with whether I'm right or not."

The ancient Urdnot did not boast of his skill or toughness. "I understand. Sure it wasn't easy for you to decide on this." He gave the neighboring Voronin a scathing glare.

"If we accomplish this mission they can come after my ass." She did not say what would happen if they failed, but then again, it was not necessary. _And if we don't accomplish it, it won't matter._

Not far from them, Amélie and Garrus were comparing their respective weapons. The Turian looked down the scope of Widowmaker's rifle. "I would have to tinker with this to use it well", he commented. "And there's no way you could conceal your position after one shot."

The French assassin, on the other hand, was delighted with Vakarian's Krysae pattern rifle. " _C'est magnifique"_ , she praised it. "The balance is superb. It feels light. Your kind really knows how to build rifles."

After a while, with reluctance, the Turian left his Krysae on its rack and picked up a pristine Widow's Kiss. "Concealment won't be a problem where we're going. And your gun packs a lot more punch than mine."

Next to them, Rix and T'Perro were watching Symmetra in astonished silence. In front of the former Vishkar engineer were laid out half a dozen hardlight casters, each of them on different stages of disassembly. She was switching parts between them, putting one back together, running diagnostics, changing some settings and, finally, testing the weapon — which meant she would weave strands of hardlight in intricate patterns, an example of which would be to create a barrier in front of her, then slice it clean with a glowing whip she would spin around her like a gymnastics ribbon. Then she would power down the weapon, take it apart with blistering speed, and the process would start all over again.

Tracer caught sight of that and smiled. "Some things never change."

Rix frowned. "I have to admit I'm totally lost here. I don't understand what is the expected result of all this tuning. I don't even know how she measures performance."

"Architech is a complicated field of study", Symmetra answered mechanically without slowing down. "Hardlight has varying levels of consistency, heat, luminescence and endurance, to name just a few choice properties. Stella has fed me environmental data on Garvug and I'm calibrating my casters for optimal performance."

Voronin observed the preparations from a side, Cardoso and Montaigne in silent attendance. The admiral, having already toured the ship and interviewed its crew, had seemed to soften his position a little bit, becoming less adversarial and more neutral. The inspection, along with extensive analysis of the foes fought on Elysium, had given him an inkling of what they were up against this time around — and he had started to understand why the Compact agents were so committed to their mission.

None of this affected his disapproval of the way Shepard was handling things. "For your sake I hope you're right, colonel."

Aaliyah took some time to answer. "Begging your pardon, admiral", she corrected him quietly, "for all our sakes I hope I'm doing the right thing."

* * *

The hologram projector was displaying a picture of a satellite and a chart showing its position relative to Garvug and the likely coverage of its sensors.

"This is an intelligence and support satellite of the kind used by the STG", Surrakar said. "Usually they deploy one ahead of them when they have to conduct operations in remote or untamed worlds."

Astrid thought she saw the problem coming. "So they're down there, but…"

"But", the Spectre echoed, acknowledging her, "its logs are empty. The team down there did not send out any communications."

"Taking the satellite orbit into account", Rix continued after his colleague, sending a command to the projector to illustrate that, "they could be on any of these land masses."

The Compact crew studied the hologram. The satellite described an orbit that made for irregular coverage. Broad swathes of the surface were highlighted in yellow to depict it, with the tone fading away depending on how long had it been since the satellite had orbited over that particular place.

"That's great", Reyes muttered. "Just two continents and three hundred-something islands. My kind of holiday."

"This won't do", Garrus agreed.

"What is the situation on the surface?" Amari asked.

"Nothing unusual", was T'Perro's response. She then grimaced. "Well, the usual here is low-intensity warfare. You got a three-way conflict here, with clan Hailot on one side, the Blood Pack on another, and finally a loose group of corporate interests."

"Wrex?" Shepard inquired quietly. All eyes turned towards the Krogan.

"Wrund is an old rat", he said after a grunt. "You see a large settlement down there, chances are it belongs to his clan. The Pack don't really do ruling, they do looting and killing. They'll have lots of camps and holes to hide in but no big places. And not all of them will belong to the same crew. Lots of Pack small fish are at each other's throats there. They'll only follow direct orders from Garm himself."

"You're well informed", Amari observed.

"I'm old, girl. How many old Krogan do you know?"

"What about the corporate enclaves?" Lena Oxton wanted to know.

"On paper, they're all rivals and competitors", Miranda answered offhandedly, "but the mercenaries hired by each are de facto allies. They have to. Krogan are ferocious, the Blood Pack almost bloodthirsty. They can't afford to bicker with each other."

"So, if I understand this correctly", Garrus ventured, "they're the most approachable people here."

"And the least likely to have answers", T'Perro added. "If they knew of Saren's whereabouts word would have reached us by now."

Reyes looked at Wrex. "Enlighten me. Suppose you want to challenge a chieftain. How'd you go about it?"

"Why do you ask? You say I could challenge Wrund?" The Krogan shook his head. "I don't belong to that clan. The shamans would refuse me. Clans only allow challenges from clan members, never from people belonging in other clans. Not even if the wannabe challenger has overwhelming support."

The former Blackwatch commander frowned. "The way I hear it, we can get the data we want only from the enemy. The Geth are the enemy, but getting intel from them is a dangerous proposition." Sombra glanced angrily at him, but that was that. "The Krogan here may be the enemy too. If the call was mine to make, I'd order you to try and make inroads among the locals — and if that fails to just beat what we want out of them."

That earned him a nasty glare from Amari. "That's callous."

"But sensible", Shepard said as dryly as she could.

"I'd almost wager your assassin here knows that both choices are one and the same", the Krogan commented with a rumbling chuckle.

"It's risky", Surrakar mused, "but Krogan respect strength." He exchanged looks with his colleagues and aides, then spoke to the Alliance agents: "If we go ahead, we Turians will be your backup. Being seen next to you will only make things harder."

The Starwatch colonel nodded her agreement. Then she turned towards Voronin. "What's your opinion, admiral?"

The Navy officer frowned, thinking. "I would first make contact with the corporate enclaves and find out what they know about Hailot and Blood Pack strongholds, if we cannot obtain that information from orbit."

"Clan Hailot's main settlement is the fortress city of Dhazil", Stella informed, highlighting it on the map. It was a sprawling metropolis built on the largest island of an archipelago. "Its location makes it a tough target for raids, and chieftain Wrund has reinforced it with a permanent garrison and anti-aircraft weapons."

"Getting there won't be a stroll if they decide we're the enemy", Astrid commented.

* * *

Garvug was the cesspit it had been reputed to be, and worse. Rainy weather was basically the only kind of weather there was here, and they were acid rains on top of that — which meant both Reyes and Sombra ended up donning armor themselves as well, to their annoyance and discomfort.

"I'll be damned if this isn't a sad place", Tracer commented sourly. "What happened here?"

"That." Wrex pointed out the thick windows. Beneath their shuttle lay a dull purple sea, and large islands. Each of them was covered in ruins. Time, the harsh climate and the perennial proclivity of his kind towards violence had ravaged them, but it was still clear to the eye that those had been industrial complexes. Greedily and irresponsibly ran, judging by the massive drain pipes and the smokestacks that still stood.

"Gaia's Lament", Symmetra said with solemn gravity.

One such island had been painstakingly cleared and built upon. The walls of the fortress there were painted with the silver and turquoise colors of Lucheng Interstellar.

"Colonel Shepard, this is admiral Voronin", the Navy officer said over the radio channel. "The executive officer in charge of Lucheng's local operations is one Tatsuya Sagawa. He'll be waiting for you."

"Thank you, admiral. Anything I should know about him?"

She could almost hear the man shaking his head on the other side. "That's a negative, colonel. I contacted him on behalf of the Alliance and secured his cooperation — but that's all I can do for you. You know how much substance there is to such words out here."

"There's been fighting here", Tali'Zorah commented, noting the scorch marks on the eastern walls. Roughly half a dozen wrecked aircraft littered the ground beyond them.

Reyes read the battlefield. His mind had gone back to the days of Blackwatch, to desperate last stands that had pitted him and his handful of agents against seemingly endless waves of foes. "Someone doesn't much care about wasting men."

"The Blood Pack loves to throw Vorcha at a problem until it goes away", Jaenna'Gisal muttered from behind her helmet. "And the damned things love it. They don't fear death."

Next to her mother, Shilu'Vael was silent, occasionally muttering to herself. Her fellows pretended not to hear it, guessing she was communing with Agleia.

Security was tight, they noted. A squad of fighter drones escorted them as they approached the fortress, and said squad was replaced during the final stretch by another, this time of jumpjet troopers. This, of course, drew Amari's attention: "I know those colors."

The airmen had their flight suits painted in a dull, low-observable, sickly gray, except for a few choice yellow and dusk green bits on the ailerons and engine housings.

"Who are they?" Astrid asked.

"The Wings of Icarus, they call themselves. They're 'security contractors'," was Layali's scornful answer. "Their boss and I go back a long way."

Lacroix observed the troopers as they formed around their shuttle. "Not a friendly acquaintance, I gather."

"He's good, but… he's * _so*_ arrogant. Everyone who's not him is beneath him. And the worst thing is, he's got the skill and creed to back it up."

T'Perro snorted. "So you're saying you'll want him on your side when things go sour, but only then."

Amari snorted back. "Pretty much, yeah."

The six-man squad who met them on the ground had different markings, though, their armor painted a dark purple. Genji noted this, and wondered just how organized the enemy was if they would stage nightly assaults against this place. He would have to ask.

A man stepped forward. "Colonel Shepard, is it?" he addressed Aaliyah. Then he smiled. "Solomon Trakes. Admiral Voronin warned us of your arrival. It's an honor to have you here."

The Starwatch colonel examined him. Her onboard AI told her he was exactly 171cm high and weighed 91,100 kilograms plus armor and gear. The few strands of hair that she could see through the visor of his helmet were dirty blond in color. He had the face of an actor, a bright smile, teeth even and perfect. And green eyes measuring her with a dispassion he could not conceal — or, more probably, did not bother to conceal.

"Thanks for receiving us", she replied evenly. "This is far from Alliance space. What did the Navy have to say about you being here?"

The man half-shrugged. "I'm no longer in government service, ma'am. Whatever they have to say doesn't concern me. I haven't broken any laws."

 _But you surely know how to bend them just fine._ Shepard knew of Trakes. His unlikely combination of prodigious marksmanship and talent for insinuating himself into groups of people had earned him an officer commission, and he had subsequently been inducted into the internal affairs and counterespionage branch of the Navy. While the Rat Squad, as the scathingly hateful moniker went, was about as popular as the morning run after a wild night, Trakes in particular had become infamous: his department, even if given ample powers to subpoena, interrogate and investigate, was supposed to operate within some boundaries, but the darker shades of the gray area between lawful and unlawful had been his territory. Unsanctioned breaking and entering, unauthorized wiretaps and hacks, misrepresenting himself — anything was game.

Upon first hearing of this, she had thought of such a man as a snake — someone who could one day visit death from ridiculous distances upon a high-value target and dig up dirt on his fellow servicemen the next was no doubt useful, but not a person she could trust. This first face-to-face meeting confirmed those impressions.

"I have to say, given your rep, it's surprising to find you working as a merc."

Trakes dropped his smile and became serious. "Not all of us are lucky enough to be in a position where we can really change things."

"You say that I am?" she asked candidly.

"Yes", he replied with equal candor. "And I both envy you and admire you for that."

The Starwatch colonel kept her face perfectly still. It was a very good answer, and her gut was sending her mixed signals — so she decided to give Trakes the benefit of the doubt. "I can't say whether those words flatter me or tire me out."

The man frowned and bowed his head in agreement. "I'll give that to you — changing something for good is never easy." He gestured ahead of them. "Administrator Sagawa is expecting you on his offices. Please follow us."

"Spare us the pleasantries", Reyes said hoarsely. "It's more likely you know what we want to know. Have you had any Salarian guests here?"

Trakes gave him a quick examining look, then answered: "We have Salarians among the payroll here." He arched an eyebrow: "Anything I ought to know?"

Shepard took a brief look around herself, trying to gauge the atmosphere there and get the feel for how stressed the mercenaries were — or so it seemed. She exchanged looks very briefly with both 'Silthea' and Shilu'Vael; the first acknowledged her glance but made no gesture, and the second had that vacant attitude that told her she was preoccupied with something she was not yet ready to share.

"Nothing just yet", she said without exteriorizing her concerns. "We are after the trail of some agents in the service of the Compact that haven't yet reported, but it's not a matter that should concern whatever Salarians there are here under your employ."

The Lucheng Interstellar compound in Garvug was not big. One main building housed the workers and researchers staffing the outpost, a smaller one had been designated as the barracks, four others had the markings of being warehouses, and a large, bulky construction housed the reactor powering the settlement. The largest part was actually the starport, with a series of huge hangars and a runway that doubled as parking area for both aircraft and voidcraft.

The Compact crew took this in with different ideas in their minds. Oxton, Reyes, and Shimada recalled what the Horizon Lunar Colony had been like. Shepard also did, though the memory that jumped to her mind was that horrific engagement on the Cabeus crater. Lacroix, while having earned her infamy by the days of both Omnic Crisis herself, was as cold and unfeeling as ever, and instead was noting how the place was organized to be easy to defend and a nightmare to assault, including such things as strongpoints, guard posts, passive surveillance devices and sensors, and the layout and arrangement of the buildings themselves. Amari and Miranda were also evaluating everything with the same clinical eye.

As a scientific advisor attached to their mission, Liara was quiet. Military deployments were not her field of expertise. If they got to visit the civilian quarters perhaps she would see something interesting, but it was not likely her skills would be needed before they entered Saren's compound, if he really had a compound here to begin with. She found Shepard's eyes as Aaliyah glanced at her, and her lips curved in the barest hint of a smile; the Starwatch colonel had carefully avoided her since Voronin's inspection team had arrived, but she was aware of her reasons — and of the stress the situation was putting her through.

"What kind of agreement do you have with the other corporate enclaves here?" Astrid asked Trakes.

"None. They're competitors, not allies. You don't give anything to a rival", was the answer, delivered perfectly deadpan in tone and expression.

"Though if you hear of an incoming raid or enemy… it doesn't hurt to be a good neighbor and send them a friendly heads-up?" Tracer guessed.

"Well, since you put it that way, miss Oxton, if some of my men actually go out of their way and do such a thing, I can't really punish it", he agreed with a complicit look. "After all, we hired guns are all colleagues. We don't know who we're working with tomorrow."

"I get the feeling your administrator doesn't quite share that point of view", Jaenna'Gisal quipped.

"Sagawa-san is… strict. And you will please excuse me if I prefer not to explore the topic. I would not like to antagonize with my employer." Again, the line was delivered in a tone that oozed raw irony. He took another look at Shepard's group. "I know they come with you, but the Krogan and your engineer—" he pointed at Symmetra "—should stay outside. She's a known Vishkar employee."

The brown-skinned Vaswani bowed her head at Shepard. "I don't want to cause you any trouble. I'll stay here."

"That's not happening", T'Perro said forcefully, to Aaliyah's surprise. "Both are assets working for the Compact. Unless Lucheng wants to explain itself to both the Alliance and the Citadel, they're staying with us."

Trakes' assessment of his boss was accurate. Sagawa was from Minamo, a small Terminus colony populated exclusively by Japanese settlers with particularly nasty streaks of racism and xenophobia, not even trusting fellow humans of different ethnic groups. He was unusually tall and strongly built for a man of almost pure Yamato stock; he met the Compact squad with a perfectly neutral expression on his features, but something about him that she could not place told Liara that he was thoroughly disgusted by their mere presence. She had to warn Shepard, but she was intimidated by the stifling atmosphere of the man's office and unwilling to draw attention to herself.

"I hope you will excuse us for the rough welcome", Sagawa said stiffly. "Having to be prepared to repel attackers around the clock leaves us little room for relaxing."

There was a veiled sneer behind those words that could be read in many ways. Shepard chose to turn the tables on him. "Then you must understand what it means to be pressed for time, administrator. That is our case, so we will waste as little of yours as possible. We are on the lookout for a cadre of Salarian operatives."

His jet eyes did not change. "We don't get many visitors here", he answered curtly. "I assume my guard commander has filled you in on this."

"He said you have some Salarians in your payroll, and yes, I saw some of them here and there." She insisted: "You said you don't get many visitors here. Did you get any Salarian visitors recently?"

"Not here. There is nothing interesting here for people other than mercenary work. We don't do tech research or trading. The company's goal here is to rehabilitate the ecosystem so it can sustain a much larger population. Much like your own employers, miss Vaswani", he said thinly in the way of Symmetra.

"I'm no longer in Vishkar's employ, administrator", she retorted dispassionately. "I owe them no loyalty. I am in the service of the Compact now, and bound by the agreements that regulate their operations."

"Is that so", Sagawa acknowledged her coolly. "Then you would do well to avoid your former colleagues here. They jealously guard their operations here, perhaps even overzealously so."

Genji glanced questioningly at Shepard and got a slight nod in response. Then he stepped forward. "Sagawa-sama", he addressed the officer respectfully, "I understand your mistrust of us. I am aware that life here is hard and fraught with dangers, and that we are imposing on you. I imagine what little attention you receive from galactic governments is never in the form of aid, that they are always making demands and requests. I cannot discuss much the reasons for our presence here, except that they involve the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius. Our Salarian operatives were tracking him down and we depend on them to locate him, so we would like to have—no, please excuse me, we _need_ your cooperation." After a beat, he added: " _Onegaishimasu_ ", and bowed.

The Overwatch legend had surmised he could appeal to the Minamese's sense of duty, a trait deeply woven into the fabric of Japanese culture. Fortunately, his hunch proved correct. "I understand. Please forgive my manners, Shimada-san. It's an honor to have you here." He then started tapping commands on his omni-tool. A small holographic screen popped up over his wrist. "Regrettably, other than the fifteen Salarians employed here, we haven't had any others coming around here. To my knowledge, Lucheng employs a few of their kind. The one interesting bit of data I have for you is just a rumor we picked up." He searched for a file with notes, then opened it. "Ah, here. We were used to large and well-organized raiding parties, hence the heavy security you saw on the way in, but in recent months the Blood Pack has lost whatever finesse they had and has simply resorted to brute force instead. We conducted some inquiries among the Hailot, and this is what we found out: someone is gathering the more experienced and skilled among the Blood Pack and gathering them under their banner."

The Compact crew traded looks.

" _Arigato gozaimasu,_ Sagawa-sama", Genji thanked him earnestly. "I understand you have no inkling about who is this someone gathering them."

"That is unfortunately correct", Trakes said for him. "Whoever's behind it all, they certainly pick the smart ones, and the smart ones are also quiet ones."

"As usual", Reyes noted.

Shepard had to suppress a sigh. The visit had been a waste, except for some fact-finding and networking, and those were things that you never knew when they would pay off.

But in the short term, it still was a waste. "So we're off to visit the Hailot, I suppose."

"And there goes whatever element of surprise we still had left", Amari said bitterly.

* * *

"Dhazil control, this is Vulture flight, operating out of the vessel _Redoubtable_ and here on Compact business", Tracer spoke on her headset from her seat in the Montauk's flight deck. "We are on approach and require a free landing bay. Please advise, over."

The reply was coarse and harsh: "You're not in our list. Who invited you, Vulture? Strangers aren't welcome here. Turn back and leave or you'll be shot."

"Let me handle this, girl", Wrex said in irritation, and once she had let him into the channel, he stormed: "Listen up, princess, go to Wrund and tell him that Urdnot Wrex says he's a traitor for sucking up to a Turian, a coward who's always using others to solve his problems for him! He shoots us, he'll prove us right and the whole galaxy'll be after his sorry arse. You go and tell him that!" He closed the channel, and smirked a grin full of serrated teeth. "That's the Krogan way."

Lena smiled. "Charming."

Soon afterward it was obvious Wrex was right, because they were allowed to land — in a landing pad separate from the rest of the starport, surrounded by anti-aircraft defenses and many, many militia, mostly Vorcha, but armed to the teeth.

"Thin-skinned", Symmetra observed laconically.

"Now, you, listen up", he said to Shepard. "Here we are, so it's up to you now. You're the one who needs to ask questions, so challenging them is up to you. No fancy words here — if you're tough enough to take on one of us one-to-one, the time to prove it is now."

Aaliyah nodded pensively, her mind going through everything she had ever known about Wrex's kind. They respected bravado and strength — and playing meek was not going to cut it.

And bravado and strength were present in spades there. Thirty Krogan, all of them armed to the teeth, were assembled around the ship, with ten times that number in Vorcha militia behind them. They all erupted in laughter when they saw the company Wrex was keeping.

The Krogan in the front, one large and burly even for the standards of his kind, examined the scrawny little things with contempt as they walked down the shuttle's boarding ramp, and snorted at Wrex. "So this is your krantt?" he said haughtily. "Have you grown soft, grandfather? What have you been snorting?"

Wrex's answer was blunt. The headbutt sent the other Krogan stumbling a few paces backwards. "Where's your slug of a boss?" he growled. "I don't have time for yes-men." Then, to add insult to injury, he headbutted him again. This time the larger Krogan ended on the ground. "Yes-men who've built up fat and not scars. Grow a quad before talking to me."

Anger rippled through the assembled Krogan and Vorcha there, but no one challenged him openly. However brutal a beatdown, it had also been honorable and as Krogan as it possibly got.

"You don't pick the best of times to visit", another guard said, some respect in his voice now. "The clan is in assembly. Whatever business you got here, you'll have to explain yourself to the shamans and the chieftain."

Wrex jerked a thumb at Shepard. "We're looking for someone. She does the talking here."

A nod, a grunt. "Speak."

She did not hesitate: "We're looking for a Turian. A renegade Spectre."

"Turians? Here?" The guard scoffed. "He'd need a quad the size of this island to show his face here. Maybe our chieftain knows, but you'll have to ask him that."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Fine. Where do we find him?"

The guard gestured with his rifle. "Come with us."

She laconically bowed her head in agreement and at a gesture of her hand, the Compact crew followed, Park's hardsuit and their Bulwark included. The guards eyed them attentively but said nothing.

Dhazil was everything the Lucheng compound was not: large, chaotic, disorganized, messy. The starport and the adjoining commercial areas were marginally tidier, and only marginally — the rest of the city was one giant slum, with muddy streets, rundown buildings, heaps of trash and refuse, rowdy locals and a large serving of violence to season everything. Vorcha were everywhere, whether scurrying about, or arguing with each other in the bloody fashion of theirs, or toiling under the whips of Krogan taskmasters.

Anika, tender as she was, found all of this overwhelmingly shocking, hardly able to believe people would choose of their own volition to live in such cruelly unmerciful fashion. Symmetra was able to conceal her own revulsion, but her mind, always sharp, mercilessly dissected what she saw. For all its flaws and corruption and secrets, Vishkar had succeeded in bringing civilization to places not too different from this one. She had overseen some of those successes herself. Could this city be civilized? She studied the citizenry, and had to admit that the chances were slim. Never in her life had she been confronted with a population that reveled in their love for violence, as the locals did. There had been gangs, drug cartels and insurgent groups, but the underlying strata were made out of people wanting to overcome their poverty and miseries. She had always found that determination and used it as a recruitment tool, the first few steps necessary to bring about success. But that just was not present here.

Tracer casually looked at the architech expert and grasped at once what was going on in her head, but she did not care. She grimly and cynically believed that mankind —not the omnics, they were more practical and determined— would slowly and painstakingly make progress, but only if given firm guidance and support. When those were absent, they were quick to devolve into little more than beasts. She had seen it way too often.

The former Talon agents had their senses and thoughts on much more practical and immediate concerns. Amélie Lacroix could not help but notice the many Blood Pack uniforms in sight. More than a few of them gave them nasty looks. Familiarity born out of past deployments allowed her to communicate her concerns to then-Reaper and then-Sombra with only a brief glance. Shepard, Martinsson and Amari shared those thoughts. Messages circulated through the squad network: if the Hailot had gone to Saren then it would be a deathtrap, but retreating was out of the question.

The 'clan assembly' was taking place at a building that was, in all likelihood, the one place in all of Dhazil in better than decent shape — a colosseum-like arena. Amari snorted when she saw it, recalling her conversation with Wrex back at Erinyes: the values a Krogan prized above all others were strength, honor, and purity. And the arena was the ultimate field of honor, the one place where raw physical strength and martial skill decided life and death. It was little surprise, then, that it was the most important location in a Krogan city.

The roaring and cheering of the crowds told them that the place was packed, and blood was already being spilled there. They were led down a wide hallway that exited right into the arena itself, all the while under the withering glares of many Krogan warriors. Jacqueline and Reyes were the only ones to respond to the looks in kind, meeting each with scowls and silent threats themselves.

The gnarled battlemaster who decided whose turn it was to walk into the arena gave the group yet another dismissive glare, and after hearing the guards that had escorted them there from the starport, he addressed Wrex: "You and that little human can go in. The rest are staying here."

Shepard stood her ground, feet planted wide apart. "We're not splitting up."

Angry muttering echoed throughout the hallway, but before anyone could react, Jacqueline flared ablaze, and everyone became weightless. Everyone except for those within a protective bubble Miranda had erected, that was. Jacqueline smirked broadly. "'Scuse me, didn't hear whatcha said. Care to repeat that?"

Jacqueline, Miranda and Shilyna were not the only biotics there, not by a long shot, but nobody there could compete with Subject Zero. "Alright", the battlemaster relented reluctantly. "I'll request the chieftain to grant you passage."

 _And, of course, warn everyone about us._ Shepard had accepted it, well aware of how explosive the situation was becoming. But that was it. The Krogan would respect nothing but strength.

So, they would get a showing.

After a while, the roar of the crowds came from the other side of the gates behind which they waited, and a voice spoke loudly over the chaos. "Your turn now", the battlemaster said stonily.

The arena was three hundred meters wide and five meters deep, its walls charred and blackened here and there from past explosions and pockmarked with gunfire. The soil itself had darker patches where fighters had bled out during previous events, but now there were none to be seen. Instead, two Krogan stood in the center, the larger one decked in full combat armor, and the other wearing something the Starwatch crew guessed to be ceremonial garb. The steps and seats of that colosseum were packed full, with Wrund presiding everything from a box seat elevated and separated from the rest.

The shaman called out loudly: "Hailot! Hear me!" And the shouting died, reverent silence gathering next. "This evening, a most unusual situation presents itself to us", he said with solemnity. "Joining me and chief Weyrloc here in the arena come the best warriors from Earth, fighters that have defeated the might of our hated Turian enemies in open battle. They demand an audience with our chieftain. It is up to me, as guardian of our traditions and preserver of our ways, to decide whether or not to grant their request — and I see no reason for which they should be refused, but chief Weyrloc has voiced his opposition to it. I believe it's best to let him speak out his reasons first."

Weyrloc was as burly —and, in Shepard's eyes, as rich in lard— as the first guard that had challenged them had been. He regarded them with flat, angry eyes, and wasted no time in raising his voice once the shaman let him speak. "The shaman has ruled the newcomers have a right to speak before you", Weyrloc begun, his powerful voice rebounding on the walls of the arena, "but I can tell you what they want just from the company they keep!" he snarled. "A weakling and a traitor to our ways! Urdnot Wrex has sold himself out to the Citadel and their Alliance flunkies! We have kept Garvug a Krogan world for hundreds of years, kept the filthy aliens off our planet, waiting, building our strength. Now that a reckoning is at hand, he shows up! He claims that our liberation will only bring death and misery to us. So what does he advocate? That we remain under the heel of those who tainted us and our kind?"

A torrent of abuse and jeering poured down into the arena from the audience.

Wrex was going to start talking, but Shepard stepped forward, her eyes ablaze with cold fury and focused on the Hailot chieftain—

—then her left, metallic fist thrusted forward, the weight of hours upon hours invested in the study of Krogan physiology and culture and over forty years of martial arts training and thirty years of direct combat experience behind it.

The staggered Krogan took two steps back, grimacing in pain, and looked at this tiny human in stupor.

"How DARE YOU?!" the enraged Weyrloc charged. Shepard dodged the brute with a smooth twist of her waist and some quick legwork and again struck. Whereas the first blow had been aimed at a tiny spot on the bulky alien's throat, the second one was a chop Genji would be proud of, one that hit like a ton of bricks on the backside of his left knee. The impact caused Weyrloc to momentarily stumble, knocked off balance, and Aaliyah seized the opportunity: emulating Amari, she took into the air with a jump and planted both feet solidly on his back.

The Krogan ended up sprawled on the ground, face buried in the dirt.

Not a sound broke the thunderous silence that followed.

"There is your warmonger", she said bitingly in a quiet voice. "Now that I've stopped his bullshit, I have this to say. You follow Saren now, and you'll be slaves again. Do you really believe a _Turian_ out of all people would get you your 'revenge'? You think Saren isn't just going to use you and throw you aside when he's done with you?

"Hear me clearly now — _no one is going to come in and save you._ You want to pull yourselves out of the shithole you alone got yourselves into, you have to stand up on your own. Stop fucking whining already and start getting shit done! Stop thinking with your quads!"

* * *

 **Scarease** contributed ideas that resulted in Solomon Trakes and the Wings of Icarus, both of which will see more action soon.  
 **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** again helped me with proofreading and suggestions that kept me going.

I should say I received a guest review which I refused to post. Said guest deplored the quality of my writing. I'm not going to lie here. It hurt. That's one reason for which I did not post it. A more important one is that it did not go into specifics. There were occasions when people posted negative comments fundamenting their views, and that kind of criticism is what I need to improve. So if you don't like what I'm doing, I need to know what it is. I want to hear it. Please! :)

Taking pains to get things right was one reason this update took so long. I wasn't going to hurry simply to post stuff I wasn't satisfied with.

Stay tuned. Important things will be happening during the next few chapters.


End file.
